possible to ascertain if there is in reality any growth at all. Interestingly, the Bureau doesn’t present its retail stats with a margin of error, but simply puts out a point estimate. This effectively means that with growth rates as low as they are currently reporting, we don’t know if growth is, in reality, above or below zero. The figures are further muddied by the fact that local and provincial governments have frontline roles in compiling the information for their own jurisdictions before on-reporting to Beijing, and there are incentives for them to make sure the numbers are “according to plan”. Considering that there are more than 3,000 county, prefecture and provincial-level officials involved in the data collection process, the opportunities for mistakes, both intentional and otherwise, seem endless. The chances are that China is already in, or close to, a retail recession. If we suspend all our disbelief and take the government’s numbers verbatim, about the best you can say is that things are not improving. In August, the growth rate was 0.4 per cent year-on-year. Excluding automobiles, sales rose by 2.5 per cent. There’s the first clue to the problem right there: auto sales are tanking in value terms as domestic carmakers flood the market with new models, resulting in price wars. You’d think that a price war might result in higher unit sales but this hasn’t eventuated for other reasons, including the expiry of some government tax breaks, weak consumer confidence and elevated fuel prices. Thus, retail sales of merchandise were up by a puny 0.3 per cent in August, while revenues from catering increased 1.1 per cent. These numbers brought retail sales for the year-to-date to a level 1.1 per cent above the same eight-month period last year (+2.7 per cent excluding automobiles). The strongest merchandise categories in the year-to-date were telecommunications equipment, and tobacco and liquor, both with percentage gains well north of 10 per cent. Food, cosmetics, apparel and cultural and office supplies had gains in the mid-single digits. Offsetting these were motor vehicles, household appliances including audio-visual equipment, home improvement and furniture. Note the pattern in the last three of these – they all relate to the home – and there are a couple of good reasons for slumping sales in these categories too. Since the second half of 2024, despite a moribund housing market, sales of home-related merchandise have been propped up by the appliance trade-in scheme that was a key component of the government’s stimulus programme. Funding for the programme was renewed in 2026 but its effect is on the wane: there are only so many fridges and air-conditioners that consumers want to trade in for new ones. The government has previously reported that in 2024–25 the scheme resulted in 192 million appliances being traded in, as well as more than 18 million motor vehicles that were also part of the scheme. Now that the effectiveness of the scheme is diminishing, retail sales of home appliances have plummeted 5.6 per cent in the year through August. Thus, the underlying calamity in the housing market, featuring years of slumping prices and sales, is again putting a drag on purchases of home furniture and home improvement merchandise with no effective government stimulus counterweight. On the other hand, the telecommunications equipment category has been a star, with sales up by 16.3 per cent year-to-date. Domestic phone brands such as Huawei, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi have been rolling out new products in the low-to-mid price range, which suits the structuring of the government subsidy scheme, in which purchases of phones, tablets or smartwatches priced under the equivalent of about US$860 attract a significant subsidy. Chinese retailers going softly softly overseas With the struggles at home amid rising competition and a sputtering household consumption engine, Chinese retailers are looking increasingly overseas for growth. However, that doesn’t mean opening stores willy-nilly, according to a new report from analysts at Savills. The report, entitled “Inside Occupier Strategy – Retail”, argues that Chinese retailers are substituting quality for quantity in their approach to opening new stores both in Hong Kong and Southeast Asia. “[By 2026] brands were no longer pursuing international store counts at any cost; weaker sites were being reviewed, portfolios refined and capital redirected to more productive locations and formats.” Despite rising incomes and urbanisation, and the accompanying opportunity for scale and volumes in Southeast Asia, the report argues that differences in culture, lifestyle, religion, demographics and other factors mean that the region can’t be treated as a single monolith. Thus, they assert, Chinese retailers are taking a flagship-and-testing approach in each market. Good advice, one would think, particularly considering the fate of retailers that took the opposite course. For a recent example, one need look no further than the rapid expansion of Oh!Some in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia in high-rent districts, which is now being rolled back, with the retailer closing operations in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Thailand and even in its home city of Singapore. It is a brutal lesson in what can happen even to a popular concept if it is overstretched in foreign markets against strong competition. As usual, though, a lot depends on the quality of the real estate platform. In Thailand, the opportunity for a large-scale rollout is high because of the nationwide penetration of high-quality shopping malls. This isn’t the case in Vietnam or Indonesia, which are further disadvantaged by the concentration of wealth and income in the top one or two cities. In Singapore, the quality is high, but the scaling opportunity is weak. Further reading: Why China’s tech boom cannot mask its economic divide