While the rise of online shopping is largely blamed for the decline, regional governments are responsible for encouraging too much shopping mall development, reported the 21st Century Business Herald.

Recent closures of shopping malls have taken place this past August in Qingdao, Chongqing, and Dalian, while the most sensational example of this growing trend has been Shanghai’s fake “Pentagon” shopping mall.

A report from Beijing Technology and Business University showed that 138 department stores, 262 supermarkets and 6,209 sports stores closed between 2012 to 2015.

Despite the mounting numbers of closures, China isn’t done building new shopping malls with 7,000 new malls planned by 2025.

China’s ambitious retail space development was in full swing back in 2012 when it was the was the world’s top developer of new shopping malls. That year, Chengdu built four new shopping malls with a total combined space of 616,000 square meters, and was already making plans to build another 2.9 million square meters of retail space.

In the four years since then, China’s shopping malls have grown to about 4,000, an increase of nearly 40 percent. At the time, the boom was attributed to urbanization and the rapid rise in the country’s service industry, the People’s Daily reported.

Unfortunately, not everyone is optimistic of exponential growth.

Back in 2012, Brown Shipley senior investment fund manager Kevin Doran said the building boom in shopping malls in China doesn’t make sense.

“You have got seven to eight million people entering the workforce in China every single year, so you have to give them something to do in order to retain the legitimacy of the government,” says Doran. “Maybe 10 or 15 years ago they were doing things that made sense – roads, rail, power stations etc – but they have now got to the point where it’s investment for investment’s sake.”

Malls to moult their appearance

The CASS report said the other two-thirds of China’s shopping malls must economically restructure themselves in order to survive.

According to the report, one third of Chinese shopping malls are expected to integrate retail services at their brick-and-mortar stores with online shopping. This strategy is already being employed by IKEA stores in China, who look to expand beyond its stores that are only located in first-tiered cities.

The remaining third of Chinese shopping malls are expected to change into retail marketplaces that will emphasize customer experiences. And with so many malls closing throughout China, some have already taken this approach with positive results.

Famous as a white elephant that lay dormant for almost a decade, the New South China Mall in Dongguan has successfully rebranded itself by catering to middle-class consumers with restaurants instead of luxury goods stores.

However, the success of the New South China Mall may not be a formula that can be easily repeated by other failed Chinese malls. According to the report, another reason for the lack of support from Chinese consumers for its shopping malls is that they are regarded as being “homogenous” experiences that don’t have any differences between them.

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The collapse happened Sunday afternoon at the Red Star Macalline Furniture Mall on Beijing’s North Fifth Ring Road. Twenty of the 50 meter-long double-storied bridge, which connects to an adjacent building supply store, collapsed to the ground below.The five year-old bridge was being repaired at the time.

In 2013, a pedestrian bridge designed to hold 40 people collapsed at the Lushan Mountain tourist attraction in Jiujiang after hundreds of tourists ignored the warning signs (shown below). Eighteen people were injured in the incident.

Collapses involving larger bridges have caused a number of fatalities over the past few years in China.

Last Sunday, three people died when a traffic bridge in Xiushui, Jiangxi collapsed.

In June of last year, one person was killed and another four were injured when a 130 meter-long section of an off-ramp collapsed eight meters under the weight of four fully-loaded transport trucks near Heyuan, Guangdong.

In 2014, another 11 people were killed in a Labor Day collapse that occurred on a bridge illegally under construction in Liangkengkou, Guangdong.

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Two vehicles careened off the edge of bridge on Sunday at around 8:30 pm, falling to the river below. Three people inside a minivan were killed, and another two motorcyclists were injured and taken to hospital.

China has invested a lot of money in its transportation infrastructure in recent years, but old bridges requiring repair and maintenance are being neglected.

A 2013 investigation showed that 41 of Dongguan’s 172 bridges required major repair work, while another 16 were in such poor shape that they should be demolished and rebuilt. It is unknown whether this report spurred any action.

Bridges collapsing in China have caused dozens of fatalities over the past few years.

Last year June, one person was killed and another four were injured when a 130 meter-long section of an off-ramp collapsed eight meters under the weight of four fully-loaded transport trucks near Heyuan, Guangdong (shown below).In 2014, another 11 people were killed in a Labor Day collapse that occurred on a bridge illegally under construction in Liangkengkou, Guangdong.

In 2013, 12 people died when two passenger buses plunged into the Tongkou River in Jiangyou, Sichuan during a bridge collapse. Also in 2013, 11 people died in Fengdu, Chongqing when a bridge over the Yangtze River collapsed.

Despite costing $300 million and only being ten months old, a raised highway in Heilongjiang collapsed in August 2012, killing three and injuring five. And in August 2007, 29 people died in in Hunan when a bridge over the Tuojiang River collapsed while still under construction.

Notwithstanding these tragedies, bridges continue to be prominently touted as part of China’s economic revitalization.

This month, a pedestrian bridge completely made out of transparent glass was opened at a tourist spot in Zhangjiajie, spanning 300 meters above a gorge. Meanwhile, at a cost of 87 million Hong Kong dollars, the HK-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge is expected to become the world’s longest sea bridge when it opens in late 2017.

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For a 20 meter stretch of road, drainage pipes three meters high are held in place with tape instead of bolts anchored into the cement buttress.

It’s not clear how long the pipes have been taped up, but it’s not the first time shoddy construction has been an issue. Flimsy construction of buildings and infrastructure projects in China are described using the term “tofu”, so-named for their similarity to the soy-based food known for its lack of structural integrity. The term came into prominence after the 2008 Sichuan earthquakes when local schools collapsed, killing scores of children.

But while the taped-up pipes under the Changchun overpass may be a quick fix to an old problem, shoddy building practices have been applied to new projects as well. After the Jiaozhou Bay Bridge was opened on the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2011, CCTV discovered the bridge was finished although there were numerous gaps in the guard rail that featured missing or unsecured bolts.

The next year a scandal broke out suggesting a number of Chinese buildings have been built with compromised cement, including the Ping’an Tower in Shenzhen.

At least 37 bridges have collapsed across China from 2007 to 2012, killing more than 180 people and injuring at least 177. As a result, the government spent 43.88 billion yuan ($7.05 billion) in 2013 to repair 21,600 “hazardous” bridges in the country.

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Located south of the capital, in Daxing District, the as-yet unnamed airport is 46 kilometers south of Tian’anmen Square, and 67 kilometers from Beijing Capital International Airport. The airport will feature a stop on the Beijing-Kowloon high-speed route located in an underground station.

The new airport will also serve as a transportation hub with links to the subway, expressways, Beijing Airport Bus routes, local buses and an inter-airport transportation system. A rapid transit line in development that connects the new airport to Beijing South Railway Station will carry passengers to each destination in just 30 minutes.

The airport will have four runways, 150 parking aprons for passenger jets, 24 parking aprons for cargo aircraft, 14 maintenance areas and a 700,000 square meter terminal building.

The 80 billion RMB project is scheduled to be completed by September 2019.

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Expected to be completed in late 2017, the 55 kilometer bridge will be the longest cross-sea bridge in the world. Costing 10 billion yuan ($1.5 billion), the traffic link between Lantau Island in Hong Kong and the mainland includes a seven kilometer underwater tunnel and a bridge section 30 kilometers long.

The bridge will reduce driving times between Hong Kong and Zhuhai from four hours to just over 30 minutes.

China has some of the longest cross-sea bridges in the world, including the Donghai Bridge in Shanghai, and the Hangzhou Bay Bridge.

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According to the National Development and Reform Commission, the new Chengdu airport, due to be completed by 2025, will process 40 million passengers annually, while processing 700,000 tons of cargo. The airport will be equipped with three runways and a 600,000 square meter passenger terminal.

While the numbers are impressive, they have been drastically reduced from the initial report. The original plan called for 90 million annual passengers and 2 million tons of annual cargo. The airport was supposed to have six runways and four passenger terminals.

At a projected cost of RMB 71.864 billion ($10.934 billion), Chengdu will be the third city in China to have two airports after Beijing and Shanghai.

A total of 50 new airports will be constructed during the next Five Year Plan, thereby kicking off a three-year action plan to develop major transportation infrastructure in China. The National Reform and Development Commission has said more than 300 such projects will be launched between 2016 and 2018.

Airports in Harbin, Shenzhen, Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi’an and Urumqi have been targeted to be turned into international transportation hubs.

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Stocks for the China Railway Construction Corp. rose by as much as 6 percent on the Hong Kong stock exchange on Monday, while the China Communications Construction Co. experienced a similar increase in its Hong Kong stocks which rose by as much as 5.5 percent.

During Saturday’s session of the National People’s Congress, Premier Li called for giving “top priority to development” while Minister of Transportation Yang Chuantang announced the construction of 50 new airports during the 13th Five-Year Plan, which will run from 2016 to 2020.

The airport constructions kicks off a three-year action plan to develop major transportation infrastructure in China. The National Reform and Development Commission has said more than 300 projects will be launched between 2016 and 2018.

The new airport construction will focus upon China north and west where much of the country’s underdeveloped regions are located. Fourteen conjoining poverty-stricken areas and 477 key counties have already been targeted for development by the ministry.

Additionally, the plan calls for upgrading airports in Harbin, Shenzhen, Kunming, Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi’an and Urumqi in order to turn them into international hubs.

“Short-term growth”

According to Tom Orlik and Fielding Chen of Bloombery Intelligence, the familiar plan to invest in infrastructure as a way to support the economy is full of risks because “the focus is firmly on supporting short-term growth, with the deleveraging can kicked further down the road.” They write:

“The risk is that if stimulus is accelerated but reform continues to lag, the government could end the year with growth on target but even bigger structural problems to deal with.”

This past January, Deputy Director of the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) Dong Zhiyi had said China plans to build 66 new airports over the next five years. Costing  77 billion yuan ($11.7 billion), the transportation infrastructure upgrade would pay for eleven key infrastructure projects and 52 upgrades on existing civil aviation facilities.

Citing a rise in air travel that saw Chinese take four billion domestic trips and over 100 million international trips last year, the CAAC plans to not only increase the number of airports but also the number of domestic and international routes.

Ghost airports

However, expanding China’s airports is a move that hasn’t always paid off.

Xu Hongjun, a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China, admits that the expansion of airports in China is not good for everyone. “A lot of small airports are not doing well. They need a lot of subsidies from the central government. They were too optimistic,” said Xu.

In worst case scenarios, new airports become neglected after construction because they have failed to attract passengers. 

Following the 2007 completion of the Libo Airport in Guizhou at a cost of $57 million, the airport made headlines after receiving only 151 passengers in all of 2009.

Compounding the issue of airport expansion is the fact that Chinese airlines have been rated as some of the worst in the world, and that Chinese passengers normally have to endure numerous flight delays when traveling in China. Domestically, Chinese airlines are also facing increased competition from the country’s high-speed rail network, which offers passengers a more affordable way to travel within China.

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The massive infrastructure undertaking will not be cheap. To help cover the costs, China plans to invest upwards of 77 billion yuan ($11.7 billion) on civil aviation infrastructure this year alone. The investment will support eleven key infrastructure projects and 52 upgrades on civil aviation facilities, including work on new airports in Beijing, Chengdu, Qingdao, Xiamen, and Dalian.

Construction of Beijing’s second international airport is scheduled to be completed in June 2019. Work on the airport’s terminal and air traffic control facilities began last September, while construction of other support buildings is expected to start June of this year. Located to the south of the capital, Beijing New Airport will be the largest in the country. The airport will have seven runways and process some 72 million passengers a year.

Meanwhile, a new runway being built at the existing Beijing Airport, is anticipated to help accommodate an additional 8 million passengers a year.

Citing a rise in air travel that saw Chinese take 4 billion domestic trips and over 100 million international trips last year, the CAAC plans to not only increase the number of airports but also the number of domestic and international routes.

Xu Hongjun, a professor at the Civil Aviation University of China, admits that the expansion of airports in China is not good for everyone. “A lot of small airports are not doing well. They need a lot of subsidies from the central government. They were too optimistic,” said Xu. Perhaps the best example is the airport in Libo, Guizhou. Following the completion of construction in 2007 at a cost of $57 million, the airport made headlines after receiving only 151 passengers in all of 2009.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Chinese airlines have been rated as some of the worst in the world, and that Chinese passengers normally have to endure numerous flight delays when traveling in China. Domestically, Chinese airlines are also facing increased competition from the country’s high-speed rail network, which offers passengers a more affordable way to travel within China.

The post China To Build 66 New Airports Over The Next Five Years appeared first on The Nanfang.

In addition to private vehicles, the campaign also includes the construction of 4.8 million power poles, 3,850 public bus charging stations, and 2,500 electric charging stations for taxis.

The National Energy Administration made the announcement following the release of a report by China’s State Council which aims to accelerate Chinese electric car infrastructure.

The suggested State Council guidelines include the mandatory inclusion of charging stations for newly residential complexes, that no less than 10 percent of spaces in public parking lots have charging facilities, and that there should be at least one public charging station for every 2,000 neighborhood electric vehicles (NEV).

Responsible for building much of the new electric infrastructure, China’s State Grid will build public charging facilities in 202 Chinese cities. Plans call for an electric charging station to be found in every one kilometer radius for major cities like Beijing, Tianjin, or Shanghai. To meet demand, 6,000 public fast-charge stations and 59,000 chargers will be built to service some 3.68 million electric vehicles.

At present, the State Grid operates 618 stations and 24,000 chargers that service 48,000 private electric cars.

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