Zhongbai Group closed 30 hypermarkets in 2025 — ¥957M loss

Zhongbai Group traces its roots to 1937, when the Central Department Store opened on Jianghan Road in Wuhan. It listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 1997 and grew into a regional retail conglomerate with over 1,600 outlets across Hubei, Chongqing, and Hunan. The decline accelerated after the pandemic. Revenue fell from over ¥10 billion in 2020 to ¥8.28 billion in 2025 — a 20% drop in that single year alone. Net losses widened every year: ¥528M in 2024, then ¥957M in 2025, an 81% deterioration. Cumulative losses over five consecutive years exceeded ¥2 billion.

In 2025 the company closed 414 stores across all formats, including 30 hypermarket locations that had been losing money for years with no prospect of recovery. The closure charges alone cost ¥180M. New openings — 224 smaller-format stores — could not offset the revenue lost from shuttered hypermarkets, and the total network contracted from over 1,600 to 1,424.

The root cause was structural. China's hypermarket format — large warehouse-style stores selling groceries and general merchandise — faced simultaneous attack from discount grocery chains, community group-buying platforms, and e-commerce. Customer traffic declined steadily, fixed costs did not shrink with revenue, and state-owned enterprise governance made rapid strategic pivots difficult.

Zhongbai is not alone — Yonghui, Sun Art, and dozens of regional chains have suffered the same fate. But Zhongbai's 90-year history made its decline particularly stark: a business that survived war, revolution, and economic reform could not survive the discount store.