{"id":6069,"date":"2026-10-05T22:44:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-05T22:44:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=6069"},"modified":"2026-10-05T22:44:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T22:44:17","slug":"how-christina-zhu-turned-sams-club-into-walmarts-unlikely-growth-engine-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vaultinsider.top\/?p=6069","title":{"rendered":"How Christina Zhu turned Sam\u2019s Club into Walmart\u2019s unlikely growth engine in China"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/55514138487_8235f5a85e_o-e1791218374176.jpg?w=2048\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Christina Zhu, the head of Walmart\u2019s China business, remembers when Chinese shoppers did not have much choice.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a child, she watched her parents wake up at 4:30 a.m. on Sundays to go to the wet market. \u201cThey had to haggle, and high-quality produce wasn\u2019t always guaranteed,\u201d Zhu, born in 1973, recalled at the Fortune Leaders Forum in Macau in September.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today, Chinese shoppers are \u201cprobably the group with the most choices [in the world],\u201d and they have become \u201cthe most demanding customers,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Meeting those rising expectations has become the defining challenge for retailers in China, and Walmart has managed it better than most. It entered China in 1996 with a Supercenter and a Sam\u2019s Club in Shenzhen. Three decades later, the U.S. retailer is thriving in the world\u2019s second-largest economy even as other foreign brands struggle.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">China represents 3% of Walmart\u2019s overall business, but it is growing, generating $24.6 billion in sales in its past fiscal year, a 19.3% jump. Sales grew 20.7% last quarter, faster than the 5.9% reported by the company as a whole.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Those figures are even more impressive given China\u2019s ongoing consumption slump. Consumer-goods retail sales in China grew 1.1% in the first eight months of the year, compared with 4.6% growth over the same period in 2025, and just 0.4% year over year in August. High unemployment and a real-estate crisis are weighing on spending.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\">\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cSam\u2019s Club is positioned very clearly: We serve upper-middle-class families in Chinese cities. We think of ourselves less as a retailer, less as a channel, [but as] buying agents for members.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><cite>Christina Zhu<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Walmart has defied the downturn by meeting the dual needs of the discerning Chinese consumer: extreme convenience, in the form of lightning-fast delivery, and an in-person shopping experience so novel that stores have become a holiday destination for shoppers throughout the region.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Walk into the Sam\u2019s Club in Shenzhen\u2019s Qianhai district, and the store feels disorientingly similar to one you might find in middle America. It has cavernous ceilings and shelves stacked with goods sold in generous bulk portions\u2014only here it is gift boxes of mooncakes and abalone for the Mid-Autumn Festival instead of large tubs of mac and cheese or packs of beef franks.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The big-box membership warehouses are Walmart\u2019s primary growth engine in China. Sam\u2019s Clubs contribute about 70% of Walmart revenue in China, estimates Fitch Ratings senior director Cathy Chao, and the business has expanded from 15 clubs in 2016 to 67 in May.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cSam\u2019s Club is really the secret sauce to everything,\u201d says Cameron Johnson, a senior partner at Tidal Wave Solutions. \u201cPeople like the fact that it\u2019s cheaper, and it still feels very premium and curated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sam\u2019s Club had 10.7 million members in China as of June, each paying at least 260 yuan ($39) per year for a basic membership. \u201cSam\u2019s Club is positioned very clearly: We serve upper-middle-class families in Chinese cities,\u201d Zhu said. \u201cWe think of ourselves less as a retailer, less as a channel \u2026 We are the buying agents for members.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Staff at the Shenzhen Sam\u2019s Club say that during holiday periods such as Chinese New Year, customers line up for more than an hour to get in. The clubs have even become a draw for tourists from Hong Kong, a city once synonymous with cross-border shopping in the other direction. Visitors hop across the Hong Kong-mainland border to fill their trolleys with roast chicken, toilet paper and bumper-size bottles of laundry detergent they cannot find at home.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2023, Hong Kong travel agencies began running package tours to Shenzhen\u2019s Sam\u2019s Club and competitor Costco: dinner and karaoke on day one, warehouse shopping on day two, and shipping back across the border arranged for anyone who bought too much to carry home. Today, a door-to-door car charter to and from the Qianhai Sam\u2019s Club costs 540 Hong Kong dollars ($69) on the travel platform Klook.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Walmart hasn\u2019t always been a hit in China. Since 2016, it has closed underperforming stores in favor of expanding Sam\u2019s Club and its online offerings. Walmart is now generating more revenue than it did in 2019, when its China footprint was at its largest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Much of Walmart\u2019s China revival has happened under Zhu\u2019s watch. In May 2020, the McKinsey and Honeywell alum joined Walmart as China president and CEO, becoming the first woman and first native Chinese person to hold the job.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Since then, her biggest priority has been making Walmart China digital-first. Its stores double as fulfillment centers, and Sam\u2019s Club sits at the center of a \u201ccloud warehouse\u201d network that can deliver groceries to customers who do not live near a store.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cConvenience\u201d for those living in other developed markets might mean receiving an order within three days. \u201cHere, it\u2019s 30 minutes,\u201d Zhu said. Then-Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said last year that 80% of orders in China arrive within an hour. A Westerner might tolerate a 30-minute drive to a store, but a Chinese customer accepts only an eight-minute walk, Zhu said.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Foreign brands have struggled amid China\u2019s economic slump and fierce domestic competition. Starbucks and Nike are losing ground to the likes of Luckin Coffee and Anta Sports.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yet Walmart has \u201ckept its foreign halo,\u201d Johnson says, owing in part to high food-safety and quality-control standards and how well it has customized its offerings. \u201cThey\u2019ve localized the marketing, the digitization, the supply chains, but they\u2019ve kept their American-style service standards,\u201d he says. Walmart China, for instance, has shrunk portion sizes to match households\u2019 smaller appetites.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even China\u2019s notorious price wars\u2014called <em>neijuan<\/em>, or \u201cinvolution\u201d\u2014work in Walmart\u2019s favor. They have forced the retailer to close or renovate weak stores and digitize operations to keep customers engaged.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When asked why Walmart has surged as other foreign brands stumble, Zhu put her own spin on founder Sam Walton\u2019s most famous maxim: \u201cI only have one boss, and my boss is the Chinese customer,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>t<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>This article appears in the October\/November 2026: Asia issue of<\/em>  Fortune.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>#Christina #Zhu #turned #Sams #Club #Walmarts #growth #engine #China<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Christina Zhu, the head of Wal&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[173,7189,3508,9181,884,1980,9180,5781,1546,952,7188,7190],"class_list":["post-6069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-china","tag-christina","tag-club","tag-engine","tag-growth","tag-most-powerful-women","tag-sams-club","tag-sams","tag-turned","tag-walmart","tag-walmarts","tag-zhu"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.1 - 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