Business Trend: China Replaces Ghost Towns with Ghost Malls

Globa and Mail ^ | 09/02/2013 | TexGrill

[TexGrill]

TexGrill Thread: In recent years, Chinese State-owned Enterprises (SOEs) have embarked on an over-saturation of the market. Chinese SOE steel firms especially have produced a glut of global steel. To resolve the dilemna, Beijing had embarked on a grand urbanization nationwide scheme that called for central planners to build huge cities in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, the Chinese didn't take the bait and move to those ghost towns.

Now, urban planners are scrapping the ghost towns and building ghost malls on nearly every street corner in the major (non-ghost) cities of China. But they're called 'Department Stores' and in Beijing you find them everywhere.

The ghost malls fill spaces by enticing foreign importers to open shops as they charge outrageous prices for the goods they sale. For example, a Nike store inside Oriental Plaza in Beijing charges $2,000 US dollars (not 2,000 RMB) for a windreaker jacket, and $500 for a pair of shorts. You can buy the same items at an outdoor market for no more than one-tenth of the price.

Yet foreign retailers struggle to comprehend why selling their products at a king's ransom does not appeal to Chinese consumers. But Chinese developers aren't complaining since foreing retailers are reliable about paying their rental fees on time, which means more ghost malls are coming to China.

[TexGrill]

Global business tip

[headstamp 2]

This why I laugh when we are accused of being wasteful with commodities and energy.

[lurk]

Central planning. It’s interesting.

[Chode]

all them ghosts gotta shop somewhere...

[MasterGunner01]

Deport all Donkey ghost voters to Chinese ghost towns. Ditto for illegal aliens.

[jmacusa]

All built up and no one to live in them. Maybe if the Chinese hadn’t adopted the ‘’one child per family’’ thing there would be lots of folks to live in those ‘’ghost towns’’.