This Day, That Year

Item from Aug 3, 1997, in China Daily: A Beijing resident selects clothing at a department store run by the high-end French retailer Galeries Lafayette. The central government has approved 16 foreign-funded ventures as the country gradually opens up its retail sector.

Major department stores are cashing in on China’s insatiable appetite for foreign products.

Galeries Lafayette returned to the capital in 2013, 15 years after the French retailer closed its only store in Beijing due to poor sales.

In 2011, US retailer Macy’s started offering shipments to the country, encouraged by the heavy traffic to its websites from Chinese shoppers.

As the online business flourishes, physical stores are losing customers.

The 130-year-old British retailer Marks & Spencer has shut all of its 10 stores in the Chinese mainland. Its branch in Beijing was closed in March.

To meet the changing shopping habits of Chinese consumers, Marks & Spencer has opened stores on Tmall and JD, two of the largest online marketplaces in China.

In October, US e-commerce behemoth Amazon launched Amazon Prime in China to grab a bigger share of the lucrative market.

Last year, China’s crossborder online shopping grew by 24 percent to 6.3 trillion yuan ($924 billion), according to market consultancy iiMedia Research.

By 2020, a quarter of the Chinese population will be shopping either directly from foreign-based websites or through third parties, it said.