The annual consumption of Coco-Cola per capita in the regional markets mentioned

As China’s vast interior gets richer, Grenda Lee, Coco-Cola’s Shanghai-based director of external affairs, finds herself dreaming about tapping the country’s rural market. Chinese peasants account for roughly 70 percent of China’s 1.3 billion people, but on average each drinks only three Coke products a year. That compares with some 60 drinks consumed annually in Shanghai and Beijing, 150 in Hong Kong and 420 in the United States. With so many customers at stake, potential profits take on epic scale.

It takes only a trip on the busy but rutted highway that leads north from here to understand how a huge swath of the Amazon jungle could have been razed over the course of just a year. Where the jungle once offered shelter to jaguars, parrots and deer, the land is now increasingly being cleared for soybeans, Brazil’s hottest cash crop.