Migrant Worker

Last Friday, my usual 10-minute bus ride from home to the office was extended to over 20 minutes as the bus crept through a teeming crowd at the corner of Longquan and Baiyun road. I’d been watching the progress of renovations to the old ShengXing supermarket each day as I passed for the last six months, but only recently did I realize what was going on: the huge building had been sold to Carrefour, and a new branch was opening in Kunming.

I did a bit of snooping around to see if the expansion was being greeted with media attention, and found this article in the International Herald Tribune. It explains that Carrefour, a French company, has pursued aggressive expansion in the developing world. Kunming gets a mention, too:

Carrefour has about 7,000 outlets in 29 countries and opened its 80th Chinese superstore in Kunming last month, according to its Web site.

But wait! The branch on my bus route just opened last week! What gives?

Turns out Carrefour has opened two new Kunming branches in the last month or so, to augment the two branches we already have. I can’t say I mind, because weekend trips to the downtown Carrefour generally make me feel as if I am a salmon, slowly swarming upstream to my ancestral breeding ground (whole wheat bread and imported cheeses) while attempting to avoid bears (businessmen screaming into their cellphones), dams (housewives with heaping carts who have run into each other — literally or figuratively — and having a lengthy conversation) and toxic waste (the fish section).

If anyone has any specific political objections to these stores or the company I’d love to hear them. As I see it, they provide safer meats which they are sourcing locally, they sell organic produce (can’t tell where it’s sourced, possibly outside of province but not international imports), and their non-organic produce is pretty worthless so people who don’t want organic will still buy at farmer’s markets. Their clothes and plastic crap section isn’t any cheaper than smaller stores, so they are only getting the business of people who don’t want to bargain or people who are willing to pay extra for one stop shopping — still a very small proportion of Chinese consumers.

Most big box stores in China actually generate an extensive market area of smaller shops in the surrounding areas. I think eventually these stores may do some local economic damage, but at this point, I’m not seeing it.

See the above map for the locations of old (red) and new (red-yellow) Carrefours in Kunming. The red labels are generally what I would tell a taxi driver if I wanted to go there (along with Jia Le Fu 家乐福 of course).