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South China Mall by Philip Gostelow
In the past 5 years it’s estimated China has built 500 malls – all waiting for the rise of the middle classes to have spare money to spend on items they don’t really need. The South China Mall in Dongguan, Guangdong province can proudly boast to being the largest mall in the world. Opened in 2005, it includes themed shopping precincts of Venice, Amsterdam, San Francisco and the Caribbean an amusement park and its own Arc de Triomphe. It may be the largest - covering a vast area of seven-million-square-foot – but it is also, spectacularly, the emptiest. Of the approximate 1500 retail shops, only a dozen are occupied. There are more security personnel and cleaners than customers. While most of the buildings remain empty, the others lie incomplete. What went wrong? It’s an example of Chinese ‘Cowboy’ developers not doing their homework. It’s a monument to the potential of big dreams and schemes that ride on the boom economy of China. More importantly it’s an example of what can happen when entrepreneurs – riding their luck on a moneyed middle-class that isn’t yet as prevalent as the market would have us believe - get it wrong.
