Shopping malls in large cities should be controlled: expert

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, November 21, 2003

Shopping malls in large cities should be controlled: expert

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According to experts concerned, the number of shopping malls in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, etc. eight cities has taken up over 70 percent of the total in China. It should be moderately controlled while the focus of shopping malls in China will be shifted out of the first-rate cities.

By the end of 2003, the shopping centers in cities at the provincial capital level or upper will come to a total of 236 with 94 newly increased. This was made known by the industry information center of the shopping malls in the "Report on the Development of Shopping Centers in China" at the first annual session of the International Forum on China Shopping Centers held in Beijing on November 17. The number of shopping malls opened in China peaked in 2003. Judging from their numbers, shopping malls in the eight large cities: Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing, Chengdu, Dalian, Chongqing and Wuhan account for 72 percent of the total in China.

Guo Zengli, director of the industry information center of shopping malls in China noted that the number of them in large cities should be controlled and there is some space for growth and development potential in shopping malls in major cities and some of the second-rate cities.

According to Guo, now there is an imbalance in the distribution of shopping malls in China as most of them are crowded in major cities with advanced commerce and there is a sharp difference in terms of the number. Limited by the market capacity in those cities, the focus of shopping malls in China will possibly be shifted out of those top-level cities. Some shopping malls will be built in Changsha, Nanchang, Fuzhou, Nanning, Lanzhou and Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian Jiangsu and Shandong provinces to form a shopping center industry of a certain scale. What deserves our attention is that Shenyang, Ningbo and Fuzhou, the three traditional commercial cities lagged behind the other cities in the development of shopping malls while the sightseeing and tourism industry in Xian, Suzhou and Hangzhou with their own thematic resources need to be further tapped and developed.

He said in the light of the economic development of the aforesaid regions and in combination with their population, consumption and tourism capacity, etc they should have the potential to form shopping malls of certain industrial scale. And meanwhile in combination with the city construction and transformation for realizing a simultaneous development of commercial business and real estate, to aim at developing commercial cities of moderate scale and with diversified forms of shopping malls should become one of the important trends in the development of shopping malls in China.

Article from China News Service, translated by PD Online staff Gao Lanrong

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