Is Walmart Really Changing China?

Or is it the other way around?  Walmart wants to set green standards for 20,000 suppliers making several hundred thousand items sold to billions of shoppers worldwide. The question becomes:  Will that effort take hold, or will it unravel?

Although Walmart’s $7.5 billion in Chinese sales receipts account for only 2 percent of the company’s annual revenues, its sales in China have risen substantially over the past decade.  Sales in the United States, by contrast, have been shrinking.  And as China’s retail market—the world’s fastest-growing—expands by 18 percent a year, Walmart’s executives smell the intoxicating scent of more growth to come.  Equally important, if not more so, some 20,000 Chinese suppliers, or “partners,” reportedly provide Walmart with about 70 percent of the nearly $420 billion worth of goods that it sells globally each year.

Take a look here.

Illustration credit:  Walmart in China map