Beijing, having the history of more than 3000 years as a city and 850 years as the capital, attracts the visitors from all over the world with its profound history and great culture. The success of 2008 Beijing Olympic Games largely promoted your international influence and reputation. The good performance in the financial crisis of last year also reflects the great potential in economy of Beijing.

Although I’m in France, I could feel the rapid development and progress of Beijing through the regular communication with my colleagues in China. Recently Mr. Eric Legros, President of Carrefour China, reported to me his meeting with Mme Cheng Hong, vice Mayor of Beijing, through which I learn the goal of Beijing to become a “World City”; while after reading carefully the reports of 2 conferences of Beijing, I also feel the strong determination of Beijing to achieve this goal.

Today, the leaders of all industries are seated here together, to give suggestions on how to construct Beijing as the World City. As the representative from retail, I would like to say something from the angle of commerce and retail, and share with you some experiences on how Carrefour group realized the win-win development with the city.

The character and construction experience of World City

Let’s see some world cities such as New York, London, Tokyo, and Paris. We could find out that they are not only the economy and culture center of the country, but also the world-known tourist resort, with a lot of impressing city landmark. The world city has the common characters as below: strong economy, high standard service, plenty of world renown MNCs HQ located, close cooperation in area economy, good city infrastructure, convenient international transportation, advanced technology education, comfortable living condition, etc.

For instance, New York is the global financial and trade center, having the famous Empire Tower, the Lincoln Center and the Metropolitan Opera, which are the art palace, the 5th Avenue Commercial Street, which assembles plenty of world known retailers and make great contribution to the economy development of New York; in London the Buckingham Palace and the St. Polo Church have the distinguishing English feature, the Great Britain Museum attracts the people with its abundant treasures, and the Oxford Street, the primary shopping street of England, gathering more than 300 world hyper shopping centers, attracts more than 30 million people from the world; the Tokyo Tower and the Silver Tower of Tokyo are both the tourism and shopping center familiar to the world.

As an entrepreneur from France, I have witnessed some progress of Paris city construction. From a small town to a metropolitan, and the world- famous shopping paradise, food and fashion center, the reasonable city commercial planning is the key point. It keeps the historical and culture places in the downtown such as triumphal arch, the Louvre, Museum d’Orsay, and built the modern commercial center such Printemps Department Store, Galerie Lafayette, to push the commerce development combining the tourism and culture.

I think you must be familiar with the Champs Elysees Avenue, west to Triumphal Arch and east to Place Concorde, where located most of the world-famous brands, and lots of coffee shops, restaurants, enterprises, banks, aviation companies, cinemas and insurance companies.

Besides, Paris pays attention to the cooperative expansion with the surrounding cities and areas, to establish the Paris city circle, which radiates 40 cities of 4 countries in west-north Europe with more than 100,000 residences each. The supermarkets, hypermarkets, and big shopping centers provide the convenience to the citizens which highly raised its living condition.

Rome can’t be built in one day. We need the accumulation of time and history to realize the harmony development of one city. Take Paris as an example, with more than 1000 years of history, Paris experienced several large-scale transform to explore a way to balance the development of commerce, culture, transportation and environment.

The advantages of Beijing and the conditions acquired to become the World City

The advantage of Beijing to become the world city is apparent. As the Chinese capital, Beijing is playing a leading role in politic and culture in China, which has many famous historical resorts, and is also the culture center. In recent years, Beijing made great progress in commerce internationalism, such as the remarkable increase of 2009 total retail sales of social consuming goods, and named by “Forbs” as the “Top 15 world shopping center”, “The 8th Food Center”, “The 3rd World Top 500 enterprises HQ Center”, etc.

As the sister cities, Beijing has many resemblance with Paris in the city landmark. The Louvre of Paris and the Forbidden City of Beijing, embody the profound culture background of the city; The Orsay Museum in Paris and the Capital Museum in Beijing exhibit the abundant art treasures; the Opera Garnier in Paris and the National Theatre in Beijing perform the famous culture activities; the Champs Elysees Avenue in Paris and the Wangfujing Street and Qianmen Street in Beijing gather many world famous brand and create the convenient leisure and shopping environment. We can say that Beijing has already the basic conditions to become the world city.

Beijing has more potential other than the above advantageous basis. Here I would like to provide some suggestions on these advantages.

Firstly, on the basis of the location of World Top 500 enterprises HQ, Beijing needs to strengthen the city commerce planning, to form the trade market with numerous stores through constructing the international trade center, in order to attract more international retail suppliers. For instance, the Champs Elysees Avenue introduces lots of famous brands to fully satisfy the shopping desire of the tourists when touring; the famous Galerie Lafayette gathers almost all the global famous brand store, covering costume, perfume, food, etc; La Defense attracts lots of World Top 500 enterprises; Rue Foubourg Saint Honore is full of top famous luxury brand.

Secondly, while introducing the international brands, Beijing should pay attention to the own brand development, to promote the international development of national brand through the continuous innovation concept. Beijing has plenty of original brands with unique commerce and culture character, but with the low internationalism degree, so it is very important to push the national brands to the world through referencing the advanced international innovation concept and promotion method. I would like to share with you the development of LV. From the bags used only by the Royalty to the famous international luxury brand, LV has more than 150 years’ history.

The product quality is the basis of its development, but the innovative design according to the continuous changing demand of the consumers gives it the persistent developing life, and the international marketing and promotion speeds up its internationalism progress. LV is specialized at establishing the creative flagship store, and is good at push the brand reputation and loyalty through technology methods, such as establish the website with different languages to adapt to the market all over the world.

Thirdly, it’s very important to strengthen the talent cultivation and international communication. As the Chinese capital, Beijing gathers lots of excellent talents, but we still need more creative masters, design masters and sales masters with international influence to drive the Beijing commerce international development.

Fourthly, establish and improve the city basic facilities. In the construction of Wangfujing Street and Qianmen Street, we need to consider the follow-up of basic facilities such as the public traffic, dinning, amusement, leisure, so as to create the convenient and comfortable shopping environment for the consumers. Besides, to develop together with the brother cities, to utilize the advantage of Tianjin and Hebei harbor to open an international window for Beijing, is full of active meaning to the construction of international trade center and moreover the world city for Beijing. And the successful development experience of Paris Great Region provided instruction to us.

The world city construction can’t depart from the environment and sustainable development
To build the world city, we need to accelerate the development of commerce and culture, but we also need to pay high attention to the environment protection. Reviewing the history, we could see lots of failure cases of the city development due to the neglect of the environment protection. The “Green concept” of Paris in city construction could also be well used in the Beijing city construction.

Paris Great Region emphasized the respect to the environment in the development and listed the environment protection as the long term development planning of Paris. In France, except for the high degree green area in the road, the government requires the citizen to have and well manage the green area beside their residence. The forest park Bois de Boilogne and Vincennes are the 2 biggest green areas, which are named as the “Green lung of Paris”, making great contribution to the fresh air to Paris.

It’s a long term process to becoming the world city for Beijing, so we need to handle the environment sustainable development in practice, and learn lessons from other cities, to realize the win-win development of city and environment. For example, the call on “less-car driving”, “more use of the energy saving product” are all the active measures to protect the environment. “Sustainable development Daojia”, proposed by Carrefour China, fully displays the concept. Carrefour not only advocates using the low-carbon equipments in our stores, but also proposes the energy saving in the logistics, to create a green shopping environment and promote the green Beijing construction.

Of course during the process of building the world city, Beijing government should provide support and guarantee through the related the policy. In the basis of its profound politic and culture background, we need to focus on the strengthening of the commerce to push the trade development, so as to realize the balanced development in tourism, culture and commerce, and accelerate the progress of becoming the world city.

For 15 years entry into Beijing, Carrefour has opened 15 stores here. In this 15 years, Carrefour witnessed the continuous change and development of Beijing. In order to better integrate into the China society development, Carrefour proposed a new concept of “Fu Daojia”. This new slogan has plenty of meanings, embodies our mission and commitment, expresses our vision and dream, and means the bigger commitment to China consumers and society. This is not only a slogan, but also shows our social responsibility, and our commitment to actively involve into the Beijing commerce and culture construction. We sincerely wish that in the future Carrefour could make more contribution to promote the Beijing commerce development and world city construction together with Beijing.


Carrefour Group CEO: Lars Olofsson