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The Wall Street Journal's front page features one more chapter in Starbucks' master plan to take over the planet: conquering China. The overwhelming obstacle there is that most Chinese people, um, drink tea.

But Starbucks executives didn't become the Starbucks executives that they are by letting that deter them from an emerging market. No, writes the Journal, "executives didn't think the coffee part stood in their way."

Indeed, if you shovel enough milk and sugar into it, pretty much anyone will chug a latte five days a week. So, Starbuck's has begun to execute plans to lure the young people into their clutches – by counting on "a new generation of Chinese with growing spending power and an appetite for high-status brands" who will soon become as addicted as you and I are.

And many are already being sucked in. Warren Guo, "a 30-year-old who works in foreign trade," told the paper that he doesn't actually like coffee. He comes to Starbucks because there are "many girls."

Runway model Fang Sun Yan "started coming to Starbucks to meet friends. Now she says she's grown 'a little bit addicted' to coffee and visits as often as three times a week." We were all "a little bit addicted" at the beginning, my friend.

The president of Starbucks Greater China shared this philosophy with the paper: "Coffee represents the change," said Wang Jinlong. Remember that quote. In the film that will be created 25 years from now, about why the Earth was renamed Starbucks, that will be the tagline.

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