China built the world's largest mall on a farm — it sat 99% empty for a decade

New South China Mall opened in Dongguan, Guangdong province, in October 2005, built on former farmland by a local entrepreneur betting that China's export-manufacturing boom would produce a shopping public to match Mall of America. At roughly 5 million square feet of leasable space, it was — and still is, by some measures — the largest shopping center in the world by floor area, with room for 2,350 stores across zones themed as Amsterdam, Paris, Egypt and the Caribbean, complete with an indoor canal, gondolas and a 25-story replica Arc de Triomphe.

The site sat miles from central Dongguan with poor public transport, and the surrounding population worked in the same low-wage factories the mall's imported luxury tenants priced out. Almost no retailers signed leases. By 2010–2011 the mall's vacancy rate peaked near 99%: empty escalators ran to shuttered floors, the canal stood dry, and photographers turned the complex into a case study of a mall built for a customer who never showed up.

Occupancy improved over the following decade as local operators repositioned parts of the complex around wholesale trade and discount retail — China Times reported occupancy near 91% by 2020 — but visits as recently as 2024 still found large sections of the upper floors vacant, and the mall never became the retail destination its scale was designed for.