In addition to warehouse supermarkets run by Carrefour, Wal-Mart and Metro, Chinese mega-cities are in need of more groceries and chain stores in expanding residential communities.

Retail business experts and developers convened at a recent meeting held in this capital of central China's Hunan Province reckoned that communities retail business will become a new economic growth pole in big cities in pace with the prosperous housing development.

The country's capital city of Beijing will see 4,000 retail stores built in expanding residential communities in the next five years to facilitate people's lives, according to the urban commercial planning department.

Wang Xiaochuan, deputy director of the Reform and Development Department under the Ministry of Commerce, forecast that it will take three to five years for 160 big Chinese cities with a population of more than one million to create a mature retail business environment to cater to the need of community life.

Guo Zengli, director-general of the Shopping Center Commission under the China Commercial Association, said that in big cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, concentrated shopping districts are usually separated with residential areas under the urban planning. In contrast to duplicated construction of big shopping malls, the lack of community-based retail stores has been urbanites' major complaints.

In Shenyang, capital of northeast China's Liaoning Province, 30 percent of the retail revenue will be generated from community stores in the next five years, compared with the current level of 10 percent.

New housing development projects in the city have left ground floors for retail businesses. A real estate developer said that usually one seventh of housing development area is reserved for retailers.

With China's economy growing at more than 9 percent a year, the retail market is expected to expand by 8 to 10 percent a year to 2.4 trillion U.S. dollars by 2020.

Source: Xinhua