中国购物中心建设方兴未艾

Ruan Zhaoxia cannot recall seeing a single luxury brand in China’s inland city of Wuhan when she first moved there 14 years ago.

阮朝霞记得，14年前她刚搬到中国内地城市武汉时，在那里连一个奢侈品牌都没看到。

But by last year Wuhan had so many brand-packed shopping malls that it ranked first in the world for shopping mall completion, with almost 1m square metres of malls.

但到去年，武汉已拥有了如此多品牌林立的购物中心，以接近100万平方米的面积，在购物中心完工面积上居于世界首位。

The mainland shopping mall market continues to boom, despite China’s economic slowdown and the woes of the property market. Though visitors to big Chinese cities are often struck by the sheer number of luxury malls — and the paucity of customers shopping in them — many smaller Chinese cities are still underserved with the kind of malls in which China’s increasingly demanding middle-class customers want to eat, shop and be entertained.

尽管中国经济放缓、房地产市场困难重重，但内地购物中心市场仍在蓬勃发展。虽然前往中国大城市的游客经常对奢侈购物中心的数量之多——以及购物中心内顾客之少——感到吃惊，但在许多中小城市，那种中国越来越挑剔的中产顾客想在其中吃饭、购物和娱乐的购物中心仍然供应不足。

Building increasingly appealing shopping malls — and enticing more and more people to spend money in them — is a key part of Beijing’s plan to boost consumption-driven growth in China, at a time when investment-led growth has faltered, leaving China with its slowest GDP growth in six years.

在投资引导型增长模式熄火、中国国内生产总值(GDP)增速降至6年来最低水平之际，兴建越来越有吸引力的购物中心，并吸引越来越多人前往购物中心消费，是北京方面推动中国实现消费驱动型增长计划的一个关键部分。

According to a recent report by CBRE, the real estate consultancy, 44 per cent of all global shopping market completions last year were in China, and nine out of the top 10 top cities for mall space under construction were in China too. Wuhan, Chengdu and Beijing, China’s top three cities, contributed half of new completions in China last year, and most Wuhan malls are more than 80 per cent occupied, in contrast with many others in China which find it tough to get tenants, CBRE says.

根据房地产咨询公司世邦魏理仕(CBRE)不久前的一份报告，中国占去年全球购物中心完工总面积的44%，在建购物中心面积最大的十个城市有九个在中国。世邦魏理仕表示，中国购物中心完工面积最大的三个城市——武汉、成都和北京，贡献了去年中国新增购物中心完工面积的一半，武汉大多数购物中心的商家入驻率都超过了80%，与中国其他许多城市很难找到商家承租的情况形成对比。

The main engine for the mall surge is China’s emerging middle class, which will hit 630m by 2022, double the current population of the US, according to McKinsey. “Middle class demand for retail, catering and leisure infrastructure continues to rise, leading to a strong performance in the mall market,” says Ke Chen, a Shanghai-based partner of retail consultancy Kurt Salmon.

新兴中产阶层是中国购物中心市场大发展的主要动力。麦肯锡(McKinsey)数据显示，到2022年，中国中产阶层数量将达到6.3亿，为美国目前人口的两倍。“中产阶层对零售、餐饮服务和休闲基础设施的需求持续升温，导致购物中心市场表现强劲，”零售业咨询公司博楷管理咨询(Kurt Salmon)驻上海的合伙人陈科表示。

But Jones Lang LaSalle, the real estate services company, predicts that mall development could peak between now and 2017, because the expected return on investment has fallen. “Developers . . . are not rushing to start projects like they used to,” says Steven McCord, head of research for North China.

但房地产服务公司仲量联行(Jones Lang LaSalle)预测，购物中心开发可能在目前到2017年之间的某个时候见顶，因为预期投资回报率已有所下降。“开发商……现在不像过去那样急着开工新项目了，”仲量联行中国华北区研究总监史蒂文•麦科德(Steven McCord)说。

“Returns . . . have softened because sales growth rates have slowed. Malls are facing competition from three sources: online, overseas and outlets,” he says.

“回报率……已降下来了，因为销售增长放慢下来了。购物中心正面临三个渠道的竞争：电商、海外商户和奥特莱斯店，”他说。

Even so, good-quality shopping malls remain in high demand. “There are so many shopping malls but so few good ones”, says Mr Chen, who notes that years of blind construction and poor positioning in the market have left China with many similar malls. “They have the same brands, the same interiors, and are not particularly interesting,” says Mr McCord. He says branding is very important for malls that wish to thrive in China, singling out K11, an art-themed mall brand backed by Hong Kong jeweller Chow Tai Fook.

即便如此，高质量的购物中心仍有很大需求。“中国的购物中心非常多，但好的购物中心又太少了，”陈科说。他指出，多年盲目建设和市场定位不佳的结果是，中国现在有太多类似的购物中心。“它们有着相同的品牌，相同的内部格局，并不是特别吸引人，”麦科德说。他说，品牌建设对于想在中国蓬勃发展的购物中心来说非常重要。他专门提到了香港珠宝商周大福(Chow Tai Fook)投资的K11艺术购物中心品牌。

K11 so far has one mall in Shanghai but the company says it plans to build at least 12 more by 2020, including no less than two in Wuhan. “Consumers really want to experience something a little different,” says Mr McCord.

K11迄今在上海只有一家购物中心，但该公司表示，计划到2020年要建至少12个购物中心，其中在武汉不少于2个。“消费者真的希望体验一种不一样的东西，”麦科德说。

“Copying and pasting something that ‘worked’ in Stockholm or Silicon Valley is tempting, but not really the right answer” in China, he says, adding that “the ecommerce threat [affects the fashion sector] more in China than almost anywhere else in the world, and most goods tend to be overpriced by world standards”.

麦克德说：“拷贝在斯德哥尔摩或硅谷‘管用的’模式很有诱惑力，但在中国未必行得通。”他接着说，“在中国，电子商务（对时尚行业）的威胁比在世界其他任何地方都要大，而且以世界标准看，大多数商品通常定价过高。”

Most people go to malls, first and foremost, to eat and be entertained “and malls have to do this right”, he says, but notes that “these are low rent paying trades compared to boutiques, the mainstay rent generators of the past”. Still, no one is betting against the desire of the Chinese middle class to spend money — especially the young, who are rapidly reversing their parents’ habit of saving much more than they spend.

他说，多数人去购物中心，首要的是去吃饭和娱乐，“购物中心在这方面必须做对”。但他指出，“与过去的交租大户——精品店——相比，这些生意交的租金较低”。尽管如此，谁也不能逆中国中产阶层的消费意愿而动——尤其是年轻人，他们的消费习惯与他们的父辈那种储蓄大大超过支出的习惯相反，且正在迅速取代后者成为主流。