Mall culture hits China – Ralph Jennings

From Asia Times (link):

The rise of the moneyed Chinese consumer may be old news. But the rise of consumers who insist on parking as close as possible to a doorway and who drink cappuccinos above a skating rink while their five-year-olds run circles around a potted palmetto has just started to hit commercial developers.

Shoppers who want more than to grab something, line up and pay for it got the attention of Singapore-based CapitaLand Retail Ltd in 2004, when the firm opened its flagship shopping mall, Raffles City Shanghai , a 40,000-square-meter highrise mall next to People’s Square in the core of China’s business capital. It cost CapitaLand Beijing, one in Tianjin and 21 anchored by Wal-Mart in provincial capitals. They cover more than 1.1 million square meters, with assets worth about $1.1 billion.