The World’s Biggest Mall is Almost Completely Empty
In terms of leasable space, the New South China Mall is the biggest retail complex on the planet and it’s been nicknamed “The Great Mall of China.” There’s just one problem: it’s almost completely free of stores, and very few shoppers are willing to go there to buy things at what stores do persist.
The New South China Mall is a ghost town—an indoor, incredibly modern ghost town. It opened in 2005, but 99 percent of its 2,350-plus storefronts remain unoccupied. The place looks like one of those abandoned shopping malls that urban explorers keep posting photos of online.
Nevertheless, it’s one of the most elaborate shopping complexes ever built and it has more in common with Las Vegas casinos that it does with malls. It contains seven areas each modeled on international cities and destinations. There’s a zone with an Amsterdam theme and another based on the Caribbean. The Parisian wing features an 82-foot-tall replica of the Arc de Triomphe. Much like the Venetian Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, the mall has a manmade canal with gondolas. There’s even a roller coaster that goes outside and back in again like the one at Vegas’s New York-New York casino.
At one point, Newsweek proclaimed it “one of the New Seven Wonders of the World.” The mall’s mastermind, Alex Hu (a tycoon who made his fortune off instant noodles) anticipated that over 100,000 shoppers would flock through the mall’s doors every day. So where is everybody? Hu failed to take various economic factors into consideration before his construction crews broke ground. The mall is inconveniently located since there aren’t any highways nearby, and it takes a long time to get there via public transit. Even if the locals make the journey, the poverty that most of Dongguan’s residents live in would prevent them from buying much.
The New South China Mall is almost empty, though, but not completely. Like any good mall, it’s got a food court loaded with American fast food outlets. And one of its many underused parking structures has been converted into a go-kart track.
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