Chongqing Municipality has turned into the largest commercial and trade center in western China.
The city has 2,200 marketing outlets. More than 80 of the outlets cover a floor space of 5,000 square meters each. Five shopping centers and 10 department stores with sales volume exceeding 100 million yuan each have been built in urban districts.
The one square kilometer commercial district around the Liberation Monument in downtown Chongqing features more than 2,000 shops, which generated 11 billion yuan of sales value last year.
The Chongqing Department Store Co., Ltd. sells 2 billion yuan worth of goods annually, becoming the largest retail store in western China.
The Chaotianmen Wholesale Market has increased its transaction value from 3 billion yuan to 7 billion yuan over the past three years. Goods traded on the market came from or were sold to more than 200 counties in Sichuan, Hubei and Hunan provinces.
Apart from domestic shops, some world-renowned retail enterprises including Carefour, McDonald's, KFC and the New World have opened 21 branches in Chongqing. Their sales value totaled 1 billion yuan last year.
In the course of commercial reforms, the ratio of individual, private, foreign and enterprises with other forms of ownership has risen to 70 percent of the total of commercial centers in Chongqing.
(People's Daily 02/01/2001)
