The US invented shopping malls, but China is writing their next chapter

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Like many Chinese shopping centers, this complex was filled with empty stores that reflected the end of China’s 30-year-long economic expansion.

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https://theconversation.com/the-us-invented-shopping-malls-but-china-is-writing-their-next-chapter-220181https://theconversation.com/the-us-invented-shopping-malls-but-china-is-writing-their-next-chapter-220181
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Friday, January 5, 2024
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Summary
Key Points: 
  • Like many Chinese shopping centers, this complex was filled with empty stores that reflected the end of China’s 30-year-long economic expansion.
  • From 1990 through 2020, large, shiny shopping malls embodied China’s spectacular economic growth.
  • These centers look familiar to American eyes, which isn’t surprising: U.S. architectural firms built 170 malls in China during this period.
  • The COVID-19 pandemic and the rise of online shopping have devastated foot traffic, leaving the nation with a huge overhang of retail space.
  • As a longtime urban policy scholar, I was fascinated by the new uses I saw for malls in China.
  • In my view, these experiments could become models for new, creative uses of retail space in the U.S., where the mall was invented.

Serving a new consumer class

  • Rising incomes and a massive population shift from rural areas to cities have created a growing middle class with significant purchasing power.
  • Today, approximately 350 million Chinese – 25% of the total population – can be considered middle class.
  • They offered consumers year-round protection from heat, humidity, cold and frost, as well as from busy streets and polluting traffic.
  • Malls were safe environments where the steadily increasing numbers of more affluent Chinese families could shop and eat, stroll and meet.
  • As a result, Chinese media reports abound with stories about well-known stores and venerable malls closing.
  • In China, as in the U.S., what scholars once described as the “magic of the mall” has become an “allure of ruins.”

Malls with Chinese characteristics

  • But the Chinese are making creative use of excess mall space.
  • The Raffles City Mall in Shenzen has a rooftop pet playground, a stage, an art display area and a sun-shaded lawn.
  • The Dream Time Mall in Wuhan contains an indoor snow center that offers ski lessons, ice mazes and tubing.
  • What began as a cathedral of retail consumerism is becoming a place where people can connect and enjoy individual and collective experiences that aren’t available online.
  • Some U.S. malls are moving in this direction, but China is doing it on a much larger scale.
  • Just as former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping once asserted that his government was pursuing its own version of socialism, with “Chinese characteristics,” the U.S.-designed mall is being rewritten with Chinese characters.


John Rennie Short does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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