China’s high-end retail market delivered a bifurcated performance during the 2026 Chinese New Year (Year of the Horse), underscoring both pent-up demand and an increasingly nuanced consumer mindset.
The extended nine-day Spring Festival holiday injected fresh momentum into fashion and luxury retail. In Beijing, Lao Pu Gold’s counter at SKP reportedly drew queues stretching up to seven hours on the eve of the holiday, with some consumers camping out overnight to secure limited-edition zodiac pieces. In Nanjing, Deji Plaza recorded average daily footfall exceeding 300,000 visitors during the holiday period — more than 70 percent above typical levels.
In Shanghai, HKRI Taikoo Hui capitalized on inbound tourism and tax-refund policies. The mall, home to nearly 90 percent of the world’s leading luxury brands, saw tax-refund transactions surge by about 700 percent in the second half of 2025 compared with the first half. During the holiday, early gift-with-purchase campaigns enabled international visitors to stack promotional incentives with tax refunds — accelerating cross-border luxury spending.
Shanghai’s Lujiazui District
The holiday performance, when viewed alongside 2025 earnings reports from major commercial landlords, offers a revealing snapshot of China’s evolving high-end consumption model. Four structural themes emerged: value preservation is reshaping category dynamics; cultural identity is driving product renewal; experiential retail is redefining commercial logic, and geographic concentration is reinforcing the dominance of core cities.
China’s luxury sector is no longer expanding indiscriminately — it is recalibrating.
Polarization Defines the Holiday: Gold Surges, Hard Luxury Splits
High-end fashion spending over the 2026 Spring Festival reflected a sharply divided landscape.
High-end gold and jewelry outperformed virtually every other luxury category. Despite volatility in international gold prices, mainland retail sales of gold jewelry and gold bars rose 12 percent year-over-year during the holiday, according to industry data. In Zhengzhou’s JDYD Gold & Silver district, the sale of lightweight gold accessories and zodiac-themed products surged 40 percent.
Across tier-one malls, queues at Lao Pu Gold counters became a common sight. At Deji Plaza, high-end jewelry emerged as one of the strongest-performing segments.
The momentum reflects more than defensive “risk aversion.” Data from Meituan showed that Gross Merchandise Value for lightweight gold jewelry increased 214 percent year-over-year during the holiday, with consumers aged 25 to 35 accounting for more than 75 percent of high-end gold purchases.
IP collaborations and culturally resonant designs — including pieces inspired by the hit game “Black Myth: Wukong” — delivered double-digit growth, blending collectible appeal with asset preservation. The convergence of aesthetic consumption and financial prudence is redefining gold’s role within luxury portfolios.
Luxury Recovery — but Uneven
Broader luxury spending showed signs of stabilization, aided in part by renewed confidence in China’s equity markets. Flagship destinations reported the return of queues, including at Louis Vuitton’s newly unveiled Beijing Sanlitun location.
Yet traditional hard luxury categories revealed clear polarization. Some brands maintained steady traffic; others, particularly in watchmaking, experienced year-over-year declines. The shift from logo-driven consumption to value-conscious purchasing is accelerating, and brand equity alone is no longer sufficient to guarantee growth.
The Clustering Effect Intensifies
Footfall data reinforced another structural trend: the concentration of spending in top-tier properties.
Large-scale art installations and culturally driven programming amplified traffic at flagship malls. Deji Plaza’s seven-meter-tall Lunar New Year installation, inspired by imagery from “The Classic of Mountains and Seas,” transformed retail space into a cultural landmark. Beijing Sanlitun Taikoo Li drew significant crowds with a cultural heritage lion dance performance integrated into its luxury environment. Meanwhile, Shanghai HKRI Taikoo Hui continued to benefit from experiential projects such as Louis Vuitton’s LV Train exhibition, sustaining inbound tourist momentum.
Regionally, first-tier cities and strong second-tier markets led growth, while weaker second-tier and lower-tier cities posted muted results. This pattern mirrored the divergence highlighted in 2025 earnings reports from major landlords: Shanghai, Wuxi and Dalian outperformed, while markets such as Wuhan and Shenyang lagged.
The so-called “Matthew Effect” in luxury retail — where strong assets grow stronger — is deepening.
Earnings Reveal the Survival Logic of Top Landlords
The holiday surge did not occur in isolation. It reflects strategic repositioning across China’s leading commercial real estate groups.
Swire Properties reported a 20 percent year-over-year increase in revenue to 8.72 billion Hong Kong dollars in the first half of 2025, although the group recorded a loss attributable to shareholders amid softer Hong Kong office rents and higher development costs.
Mainland retail operations, however, stood out. Third-quarter sales across all six mainland malls rose year-over-year. Shanghai HKRI Taikoo Hui, boosted by experiential retail initiatives including the LV Train installation, posted nearly 50 percent annual sales growth, emerging as a new growth engine.
The company’s strategy — blending first-store exclusivity, curated tenant upgrades and experiential programming — has positioned its assets to capture inbound tourism recovery and domestic premium demand. Tax-refund transactions in Shanghai’s Jing’an district rose sharply year-over-year, with HKRI Taikoo Hui among the primary beneficiaries.
Hang Lung Properties’ 2025 revenue declined 11 percent to 9.95 billion Hong Kong dollars, largely due to reduced property sales. Yet rental income proved resilient, with mainland mall rental revenue increasing modestly and occupancy reaching 96 percent.
Performance divergence defined the year. Shanghai Hang Lung Plaza and Grand Gateway 66 together contributed 58 percent of mainland rental income, while properties in Wuxi and Dalian delivered double-digit gains. By contrast, Wuhan and Shenyang recorded declines exceeding 30 percent.
Hang Lung’s “V.3 strategy” — halting geographic expansion and reinvesting in core markets — underscores a broader industry recalibration: capital discipline and asset optimization are replacing aggressive footprint growth.
Deji Plaza retained its position as China’s highest-grossing stand-alone mall in 2025, reporting sales of 26.24 billion yuan, up 7.1 percent year-over-year, surpassing Beijing SKP.
The mall’s performance is anchored in an aggressive first-store strategy and immersive art programming. In 2025, Deji introduced 83 city-level or higher first stores — averaging one every 4.4 days — including globally significant formats such as Louis Vuitton’s first perfume and beauty flagship concept.
Its integration of art installations, social-media-viral spaces and high-end retail has attracted a national customer base, with out-of-town visitors accounting for a majority of traffic. The model demonstrates that in China’s premium retail landscape, experiential value now outweighs pure transactional scale.
The Grand New Year art installation at Deji Plaza.
Following its divestment by Alibaba, Intime has entered a new operational phase under Youngor Group. Its portfolio spans high-end landmark projects and regional core malls, reflecting stratified demand across markets.
Hangzhou in77 maintained sales above 10 billion yuan, while West Lake Intime City and other regional assets delivered steady growth. The company’s diversified positioning illustrates a key principle of China’s retail reset: precise targeting is more important than tier hierarchy.
A Market Entering a New Cycle
Taken together, the 2026 Chinese New Year retail performance and 2025 earnings results point to a structural transition. China’s luxury sector has moved beyond an era of rapid expansion and is entering a phase defined by value restoration rather than speculative growth, by cultural self-confidence as a driver of product innovation, by experience-led retail models replacing scale-led development and by an accelerating concentration of consumption in core urban hubs.
Gold’s outperformance, the normalization of large-scale experiential installations and the sustained magnetism of first stores signal a dual awakening: renewed consumer confidence paired with deeper cultural resonance. For brands, the competitive focus is shifting from traffic acquisition to value creation. For commercial landlords, the decisive factor is no longer gross leasable area, but relevance within an increasingly selective marketplace.
Amid divergence and recalibration, China remains one of the most dynamic and strategically complex luxury markets in the world — not because it is expanding uniformly, but because it is evolving with greater discipline and definition.
Editor’s note: China Insight is a monthly column from WWD’s sister publication WWD China examining key trends in that important market.
