Update on the New South China Mall

I do see one person now, who appears to be a groundskeeper, standing to the right of a yellow object.

In the 15-year history of my blog, my previous post from May 2011 on this mall https://www.internationalappraiser.com/search?q=china+mall has been read more than 50,000 times.  The gist of the story was that a Chinese instant noodle billionaire decided to build the world's largest mall outside Dongguan, China. With over 9 million square feet of building area, he was planning on placing 2350 tenants. At the time of my arrival on 5/13/11, there were three tenants: KFC, McDonalds, and Kung Fu, a Chinese fast food franchise. There was also an amusement park set among hundreds of meters of canals, and on the day of my visit, it was filled with several dozen friendly secondary school students.

As I explained then, the mall was built on farmland near a city composed mainly of poor migrant laborers who built cheap cabinets, shelves and furniture, people who did not have the time or money to be mall shoppers. Access was inadequate. The Dongguan rail station was 55 minutes away and the closest bus station was one mile away.  There were tollways leading here, but the local residents could not afford the tolls or even cars. A recent YouTube video (shot in 2024) by a charming British couple (aka NICO), confirmed that there is still no public transportation to this mall. See their guided tour at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyS_ZNkSTOA .

The mall has suffered for years. Once adorned with beautiful canals reminiscent of the San Antonio RiverWalk in Texas, the inability to control algae growth forced the decision to fill in the canals with concrete.

Development continued in 2015 and then 2018, and the mall was able to achieve greater than half occupancy on the ground floor:

On the other hand the upper floors continue to fail to lease up:

And the amusement park that attracted so many middle class Chinese customers has recently shut down:

Now that local factories are closing due to economic reasons (cheaper competitors and Trump tariffs), there may be more headwinds against this enormous shopping mall.

Mall management claims an occupancy rate of 98%.  Based on the photos my estimate is 15%.