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Invest Shanghai
Several US companies, including Sam's Club, Subway and Starbucks, are ramping up their investments or expanding their presence in China, highlighting the country's vast market potential and ongoing opening-up policies.
Sam's Club, a Walmart-owned membership warehouse club, is set to open its fifth store in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province. According to a post on Shenzhen's official WeChat account on Tuesday, a special recruitment event for the first Sam's Club in the Bao'an District will be held on May 25-26, signaling the imminent opening of the store located in Wanfeng Coast City.
This follows the successful openings of the Qianhai, Futian, Longhua and Longgang stores, reflecting Sam's Club's commitment to meeting the growing consumer demand in Shenzhen, according to the post.
Subway, the US sandwich chain, has also reported significant growth in China. Wang Wei, chief marketing officer of Subway China, revealed that the brand achieved significant growth in the past year, with sales surging by more than 30 percent year-on-year in China.
"Subway is set to maintain its swift expansion in China this year, with the goal of reaching a total of over 1,000 stores by August," Wang stated in a press release on Tuesday.
In 2024, more than 220 new Subway shops were opened across the country, a record high for new store openings since the brand first entered the Chinese market nearly 30 years ago, according to the press release.
Subway is hardly alone among US companies that are seeing strong sales in the Chinese market. For the quarter ending March 30, Starbucks reported that its revenue in the Chinese market reached $739.7 million, up 5 percent year-on-year, according to a press release the company sent to the Global Times.
On April 23, Walmart opened its fourth China office in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, its first in southwestern China. The move reflects Walmart's broader strategy to expand from coastal hubs to inland regions to better serve local exporters, the company said in a statement.
Walmart saw strong sales growth in China during its fiscal quarter ending January 31, according to the latest earnings report issued by the company. Walmart reported $5.1 billion of net sales in China on a constant currency basis in the previous quarter, rising 27.7 percent year-on-year, higher than the growth rate of 16 percent to 17 percent in the previous three quarters, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Li Yong, a senior research fellow at the China Association of International Trade, told the Global Times on Tuesday that these moves fully demonstrate the continued confidence in the resilience of the Chinese economy and the long-term commitment of foreign enterprises to the Chinese market.
These expansions by US businesses in China also highlight the country's continuous opening-up, Li Changan, a professor at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
They also send a strong signal that these companies' commitment to a sustained presence and long-term development in China remain unchanged, Li Changan noted. "Despite some US politicians' so-called 'decoupling' attempts, many US businesses, including Walmart and Starbucks, have said they will continue to expand in the Chinese market."