When this shopping centre was built about 10 years ago, it was almost empty with many of the upper floor units vacant. Now, it is a heaving mass of people, with queues stretching out of the door of the huge Starbucks on the second floor.
The Chinese consumer's insatiable appetite for shopping is incredible and growing every year. New shopping centres and malls that would be a major news event in the UK open almost weekly. At the same time the older shopping centres are constantly reinventing themselves, raising their rents in huge steps to rid themselves of "no longer desirable" tenants and replacing them with Japanese and Western luxury brand stores
How sustainable this Chinese locust mentality is, bearing in mind the stalled stock market, an intensified central government tax war on house prices and rampant inflation, is a question that will be answered in due course. But for now, if you build it, they will come.
No comments:
Post a Comment