China is redefining retail: from managing spaces to building ecosystems
Chinese retail does not compete for square metres. It competes to build ecosystems. And that changes everything.
Following the recent trip that part of our team made to China, we share three takeaways that we believe are relevant to understanding where commercial asset management is heading:
- Consumption as a structural driver, not just an indicator. In China, consumption contributes more than 55% of GDP growth (compared with around 50% in the EU) and the country is already the world’s second-largest consumer market. Spending is not disappearing: it is shifting towards services, experiences and added value. This is a trend that is advancing in Europe too, but at a different pace.
- Shopping centres are no longer containers and are becoming ecosystems. The logic is no longer about leasing square metres or closing the ideal tenant mix. It is about orchestrating interactions between people, brands, services and content. Sport, culture and leisure work as permanent layers of the space. The goal is not to attract visits: it is to build belonging.
- Luxury as the driver of the entire ecosystem. The presence of premium brands is cross-cutting and far more intense than in Europe. It does not act as an isolated aspirational segment, but as a generator of footfall, desire and consumption for the asset as a whole.
The conclusion? In China, retail is not just a distribution channel. It is a strategic lever serving a long-term economic model.
The question for us is not what to apply, but what we are willing to question in order to keep generating real value in the assets we manage.