BEIJING, April 24 (Xinhua) -- Ranging from a new Sam's Club store in the eastern Jiangsu Province and two stores set to open in Shandong Province in May to a second outlet under construction in Liaoning Province, Walmart's footprint is steadily expanding across China as the country steps up efforts to boost consumption.
Jiangsu's economy is moving toward newer and better-quality development, the business environment is improving and consumption capacity is steadily rising, making it one of Walmart's key regions for expansion, said Christina Zhu, president and CEO of Walmart China, when meeting with Jiangsu governor Liu Xiaotao earlier this year, according to a post on the WeChat account of the Jiangsu provincial government information office.
The retail giant's latest expansion reflects its long-term commitment to the Chinese market, confidence in the vitality and potential of Chinese consumption, and its effort to capture new opportunities as local governments across the country improve the business environment for foreign firms, develop new consumption scenarios and foster new growth drivers.
On the local governments' side, senior officials in the three provinces mentioned earlier have expressed similar hopes for more store expansion, deeper supply chain cooperation, greater procurement of local products and wider access for locally made goods to Walmart's global sourcing and retail network.
These expectations reflect a broader national push to expand domestic demand and unlock consumption potential. This year's government work report places "building a robust domestic market" first among the major tasks for 2026. It said China will implement initiatives to upgrade services to the benefit of consumers, develop a number of new, high-profile consumption scenarios with broad appeal, and move faster to nurture new areas of consumption growth.
The policy push is being matched by signs of steady consumer vitality, with China's retail sales of consumer goods expanding 2.4 percent year on year in the first quarter of 2026 to 12.77 trillion yuan (about 1.86 trillion U.S. dollars), 0.7 percentage points faster than in the fourth quarter of 2025.
In Shandong's capital city of Jinan, Sam's Club is already attracting strong interest ahead of its formal opening in May. Membership registration for the store started in January, and two cloud warehouses were put into operation ahead of schedule in late February. On Feb. 28, its one-hour delivery service officially went online, giving local consumers an early taste of Sam's membership-based retail model via the app.
Orders poured in on the first day of operations, with pickers racing through the warehouse and delivery riders constantly on the move. For local shoppers, the appeal lies in a retail experience built around curated products, app-based ordering and rapid delivery, offering a glimpse of the kind of new consumption scenarios China is seeking to foster.
Local authorities expect the Jinan project to generate roughly 1.5 billion yuan in annual sales and around 45 million yuan in annual tax revenue. More broadly, it is part of Jinan's push to upgrade its retail offering through new commercial projects, first-store launches and faster development of formats such as Sam's Club and Hema front warehouses.
That strong early response in Jinan is consistent with Walmart's broader momentum in China. According to the company's latest quarterly results, Walmart China's net sales reached 6.1 billion U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, up 19.3 percent year on year, while e-commerce net sales rose 28 percent and accounted for more than half of total sales.
Walmart is far from alone in eyeing China's consumer market. U.S. coffee giant Starbucks entered 13 new county-level cities during its first fiscal quarter of 2026, which ended on Dec. 28, 2025, bringing its footprint on the Chinese mainland to 8,011 stores across 1,103 county-level cities by the end of December, as it pushed deeper into lower-tier markets.
The sixth China International Consumer Products Expo, held in south China's Hainan Province this month, meanwhile, attracted more than 3,400 brands from over 60 countries and regions, with international exhibits accounting for 65 percent of the total, up 20 percentage points from last year, offering another sign of how strongly multinational brands are still drawn to opportunities in China's consumer market.
The expansion of multinational companies like Walmart in the Chinese market is highly aligned with local efforts to boost consumption, expand domestic demand and foster new business forms, models and scenarios, said Zhang Qunzi, deputy dean of the School of Economics at Shandong University. ■
