Three more Dalian Wanda malls open in mainland

Dalian Wanda Group has opened three more shopping centres as it powers towards its goal of 1000 Mainland Chinese malls by 2025, ignoring calls the nation is over-malled already.

The new Dalian Wanda malls are in Nanning Wanda Mall and Fuzhou Wanda Plaza (pictured) in Jiangxi province and Fuyang Yingquan Wanda Plaza in Anhui. They take the network to 190 with another 80 projects under development or construction already, according to the developer’s website.

The company says 600,000 people visited the three malls on their first day’s trading. It also made the astonishing claim that the Fuzhou mall, serving a tier 4 city with a population of less than 1 million people hosted 230,000 visitors on its debut.

Nanning Wanda mall is described as “an all-season indoor entertainment kingdom with a theme of ‘Gui Culture’ celebrating the lifestyle of a local ethnic group”. It features an interactive children’s park, a movie theatre and an indoor pedestrian street with a five-star hotel attached.

Nanning Wanda Mall
Nanning Wanda Mall

“China’s entertainment market, tourism market, (and) sports market have just begun,” Dalian Wanda Group’s owner and China’s richest man, billionaire Wang Jianlin, said in a recent interview with the Financial Times. “These areas must be the focus of our investment.”

Fuyang Yingquan Wanda Plaza
Fuyang Yingquan Wanda Plaza

Wang Jianlin is also squarely targeting tier 3 and 4 cities for future growth – which some consider a risky strategy given the company’s revenue slumped 25 per cent in 2016, its first decline in more than 10 years.

Analysts point to the growing volume of online retailing as a driver of static retail rents in China’s existing malls, arguing that e-commerce is especially eating into tier 3 and 4 cities.

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