Changsha "New Business Wave"

Night falls, and neon signs gradually light up. In food spots, food grills sizzle; in shopping malls, it’s bustling with activity; shopfront signboards vie for attention… Changsha, this “city that never sleeps,” continuously bursting with consumer energy, is now playing out an intense drama of “all heroes striving for dominance”:

Old brands and new consumer brands are battling face-to-face, competing for consumers’ attention; business complexes, amid cluster-based competition, have shifted from simply “selling goods” to uncovering how to “sell experiences”; tea beverage brands and bulk snack shops concentrate resources and rush to open and roll out layouts… From price, scale, and quality to supply chains, emotional value, and brand core, the all-round competition is in full swing, and the consumer landscape is being reshaped again and again.

The image shows the nighttime cityscape of Changsha. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Chen SiHan

Using Changsha as a window for observation, Xinhua News Agency reporter Chen SiHan attempts to break down the logic of who wins and loses in this “new wave of commerce,” the value ecosystem, and the competitive outcomes. From the nonstop commercial vitality surging in the city of Changsha, the reporter seeks to find more surging momentum for China’s consumer market.

“All heroes striving for dominance” in Changsha

Changsha has long been a battleground where merchants must compete.

As early as the Tang Dynasty, Changsha kiln ceramics traveled across the ocean and were sold overseas; starting in the Ming Dynasty, Changsha’s position in the national grain trade grew increasingly prominent, and afterward it ranked among the “Four Great Rice Markets in China”; then into modern times, a set of well-known old brands such as Gan Changshun and Yang Yuxing rose to fame, engraving a thousand years of繁华 in the city where merchants gathered.

Tourists play on TaiPing Old Street in Tianxin District, Changsha. Photo by Tong Zhenxi

After reform and opening up, Changsha’s retail industry smelled business opportunities. In the early 1990s, Zhongshan Commercial Building, Dongtang Department Store, Xiaoyuan Department Store, Shaoshan Road Department Store, and Friendship Store sprang up rapidly, staging the legendary tale of “Five Tigers Stirring Up Changsha.” Relying on rich business formats and a full range of goods, major department stores seized the market, vying to join the club of sales surpassing 100 million yuan in annual revenue. The intensity of Changsha’s commercial competition drew nationwide attention.

The image shows TaiPing Old Street in Tianxin District, Changsha. Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Ge

With the tide rising and falling, battles over traditional channels and pricing gradually faded. Competition among new brands, new formats, and new scenarios became a new contest that deeply reshapes the city’s commercial layout.

Changsha Pozi Street, one of China’s “Four Great Snack Streets,” was once a place where a batch of old brands stood proudly.

The “Chinese time-honored brand” Huogongdian combines local customs, fire temples, and food culture in one. Classic snacks such as stinky tofu, “sister” dumpling-style treats, and dragon-fat pig’s blood are well known far and wide. At its peak, during holidays and festivals, the number of table turns per day was about 20 times, and in 2017 its sales revenue reached a record of 172 million yuan.

However, in recent years, the rapid influx of many new consumer brands has put many old brands into a two-sided squeeze.

On one hand, a group of cutting-edge brands have pushed scenarios, cultural experiences, and immersion to near the extreme. In 2018, in a location only 700 meters away on foot from Huogongdian, a viral dining shop suddenly appeared—a 7-story space with a total floor area of 20,000 square meters—that fully recreated Changsha community scenes from the 1980s. Here, tourists are willing to line up for hours; besides having a meal of little lobster and stinky tofu, they come to see interwoven old-style signboards, apartment buildings, barbershops, and video halls, and to touch nostalgic memories of the city through an immersive experience. During holiday peaks, the shop’s maximum number of tickets issued per day broke 30,000 tables.

On the other hand, some chain brands focus on core single-item snacks and build one hit after another. Stinky tofu is a signature snack of Changsha. While the stinky tofu from old brands is authentic and classic, it can easily get buried in the matrix of snacks across all categories. A Changsha company focused on this core item, continuously improved its distinctive ways of eating, and used data-driven control over every step—fermentation, oil temperature, and sauce ratio—so that flavor could be output steadily. Over more than a decade, it grew from a street-front stall into a large “food service + retail” chain company covering the entire country.

As new formats and new brands charge in from all directions, old brands’ fortunes have turned sharply downward: sales decline, and some branches close one after another; their previously expanding fronts keep shrinking back.

At the same time, a batch of “new Hunan cuisines” also entered the battlefield.

In the May 1 business district in the center of Changsha, a chain “new Hunan cuisine” brand continuously rolled out seven stores. In each store, during peak periods, long lines form. During this year’s Spring Festival, many stores were open from 11:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m., and during peak times, the waitlist could easily exceed 100 tables.

Many “new Hunan cuisine” brands that started in Changsha pushed on into first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, and Shanghai; wherever they went, the lines were like a tidal wave.

Under the heat, there are rises and falls. There was once a brand with ambitious plans to “open 20 large stores in major cities across the country within five years,” but it was soon frustrated. As similar scenarios became more and more common, this brand was no longer unique; its expansion outside the province did not meet expectations, and even its presence and buzz within the province declined.

A practitioner who has worked in Changsha’s business districts for 30 years remarked, “Competition in Changsha’s business districts is fierce. If you’re number one today, you might drop to the end of the line tomorrow.”

Facing pressure, everyone has tried to change and break through. Old brands upgrade hardware and develop new products, integrating diverse and youth-oriented scenarios such as intangible cultural heritage, cultural and creative products, and art installations; brands that fell behind attempt to regain momentum by iterating dishes and optimizing consumer experiences; while industry leaders, while deepening their focus on the local market, also move into national and even overseas markets.

Over cups and plates, competition among tea beverage brands is another kind of boiling scene.

As an important source of new-style tea beverages, Changsha’s number of tea shops ranks among the top nationwide. It has become a “red ocean” battlefield for tea beverage brands.

A “leading” new-style Chinese tea brand that originated in Changsha was, a dozen years ago, still only a small shop of 30 square meters. Now, in the core area of the May 1 business district, it’s almost “one shop every ten steps,” covering customer traffic entrances at a high density. With new-style Chinese aesthetic scenarios and differentiated flavors, new-style tea beverages tightly capture the emotional needs of young people. Even if store density is almost saturated, many shops’ doors still repeatedly see long lines—some customers even queue for three hours for a cup of milk tea.

The image shows the May 1 business district in Changsha. Photo by Tong Zhenxi

In February this year, another milk tea brand—claiming to be “the largest in China”—with a flagship store covering 1,600 square meters opened in Changsha. It turned the take-away milk tea shop into an amusement park, competing on the same stage with local companies.

As in martial arts novels, tea beverage giants from across the country come to Changsha for a “Huashan debate.” Some focus on single items like lemon tea and fresh fruit tea, breaking through by going extremely deep into narrow sub-segments; some build a multi-brand matrix to cover different consumer tiers; others extend their battle line from prime locations in core business districts outward to community scenarios.

The smoke of competition along the “food and beverage” track has not cleared. In the shopping mall sector that focuses on “entertainment,” competition has already iterated and upgraded.

The “Five Tigers” of department stores known as “Mingyang Changsha” over 30 years ago now have very different fates. Some have already liquidated and left the stage; some hover in a low valley; and some are biding their time to be reborn. Through the shifting of times, competition among Changsha’s shopping malls has never stopped—and instead, as consumer needs change, it keeps giving birth to new scenarios and new business formats.

In April 2012, Yuefang IDMALL settled at the intersection of Pozi Street and Huangxing Road Pedestrian Street, occupying one of the most popular and highest “commercial density” core locations in Changsha. With an operating area of 120,000 square meters, this commercial complex brought in more than 70 “flagship first stores,” including UNIQLO and MUJI, at once—binding shopping and leisure, trends, and social experiences deeply together, and reshaping Changsha residents’ consumption perceptions. For a long time, it was an undisputed traffic engine and trend vane for the May 1 business district, leading a wave of top domestic and international brands to rush into Changsha.

New competitors appeared soon. In 2018, Changsha IFS (Guojin Center) suddenly opened. It welcomed luxury brands such as Hermès, and experience-driven formats immediately caught people’s eyes. With humanistic arts deeply integrated into commerce, IFS quickly became a new city landmark, directly diverting many core customer groups from competitors within the region.

After that, high-quality commercial complexes poured into Changsha in clusters. Some old shopping centers showed signs of fatigue; problems like declining passenger flow and brand loss followed one after another.

Transformation was urgent.

Yuefang IDMALL, which once struggled to even move forward, regrouped. It set its sights on “Generation Z” and broke out of the traditional “box mall” mindset. It built a two-dimensional anime-themed street district and a national-style market fair, and it gradually introduced diversified experience formats such as immersive story-killing games, esports halls, and indoor climbing gyms.

Yuefang IDMALL’s general manager, Wei Longjiang, said, “Our goal is to upgrade the mall from a place for shopping into a social arena and an emotional outlet for young people.” After a series of adjustments including a change of operating entity and a full update of formats, in 2025, relying on its unique “all-around two-dimensional anime” ecosystem positioning, Yuefang IDMALL saw a steady recovery in customer flow and became a favorite of young consumers again.

Today, Changsha has 77 commercial complexes with more than 50,000 square meters. A contest still continues around positioning, experience, and layout.

If shopping malls’ competition is an all-domain game at a premium level, then the competition in the snack retail track is like a “close-quarters fight” directly at the very end of people’s daily consumption.

In the past, offline snack retail enjoyed a stable “three-legged” pattern. From the late 20th century to the early 21st century, international chain supermarkets entered Hunan one after another. With a full range of categories and standardized operations, they trained consumers to develop the habit of “buying snacks at big supermarkets.” Meanwhile, snack shops selling liquor and tobacco and snacks in business districts and communities stayed steady thanks to stable customer flow. Traditional snack chain stores guarded their traditional categories such as nut roasted goods and dried fruit preserves, and their fundamentals could generally remain stable.

Consumers purchase inside “Xiangzi hen mang” (“Snacks are very busy”) in Changsha. Photo by Xie Hai

However, the sudden surge of Changsha’s bulk snack brands shattered this sense of stability.

These brands cut out the middlemen and built a full-chain, highly efficient supply chain. By offering end-customer terminal prices that are 20% to 30% lower than traditional supermarkets, they brought all-category snack products to community streets and county towns. They used value-for-money to break consumers’ stereotype that “low price equals low quality,” constantly developed creative products, and turned buying snacks—a high-frequency consumption—into a trend experience that young people chase. For example, the “giant snacks” at distinctive snack stores in Changsha draw many tourists who come specifically to take photos and check in.

When this sales model expanded from Changsha to the entire country and grew into the scale of tens of thousands of chain stores, the old pattern collapsed at an accelerating pace.

Right across the street, international chain supermarkets that used to be thriving kept seeing their customer traffic fall, and in the end they had no choice but to close down. Traditional snack shops scattered along the streets either were forced into franchise and transformation under pressure, or quietly withdrew amid fierce competition.

New at the core: overturning everything

Price wars, arguments about scale, and the “traffic playbook”—those strategies once treated as sacred principles—seem no longer effective in the new competitive landscape.

So, who can actually get through the cycle and break out in the large shuffle of this “new wave of commerce”?

With this question in mind, the reporter visited dozens of new and old brands and interviewed industry associations, government competent departments, research institutions, and consumers from different circles. The reporter attempted to analyze the underlying logic of today’s commercial competition—how to overturn toward the “new.”

—The first overturn: say goodbye to “big and comprehensive”; consumers fall in love with “small joys.”

During the visits, many consumers said that when making consumption decisions, they care not about how big and famous a store is, but about whether it “truly understands me.” Compared with “big and comprehensive,” they are now more willing to pay for scenarios and repurchase driven by emotions. Consumer needs are becoming extremely fine-grained. Non-standardized needs involving emotions, aesthetics, and precise scenarios are gradually emerging.

Under this new logic, Changsha has seen a group of oddball challengers who deeply cultivate the “small but excellent” segments: some brands focus on body care and bath ritual experiences, and with a boar-bristle bath brush they grabbed the TOP1 category spot for bath brushes on e-commerce platforms; some focus on specific fruits such as hawthorn, carving out their own space in the “red ocean” of tea beverages; some focus on making basketball socks exceptionally well, topping sales charts for basketball socks on multiple platforms one after another…

“The core logic of the market has completely switched from supply-driven to demand-driven,” said Huang Si, responsible for industry research at the Changsha New Consumer Research Institute. In traditional competition, the industry cake is made bigger by large-scale and standardized production—what you compete on is channel capability: “produce more and sell more.” Now, a brand’s key factor in winning or losing lies in whether it can find a “cake,” then carve it carefully and, in a stock market, dig out incremental growth in a sub-segment.

This “needle-tip” precision breakthrough has helped a batch of local Changsha brands step out of homogeneous competition and grow quickly into absolute “leaders” in their niche fields. Instead of casting a wide net and blindly expanding scale to compete on price, it’s better to become a dominant force in a niche category.

—The second overturn: shatter geography as a “moat”; competition is everywhere.

“People used to like stockpiling, but now, whatever you need, you can order anytime on your phone and it arrives right at your doorstep soon.” said Peng Junli, a resident of Changsha. Nowadays, consumption has become more flexible, lighter, and more fragmented.

In the era of “department stores contending,” competition always centered on the local market, with clear and fixed geographic boundaries: whose prime location is better, whose counter has a more complete range of products, and whose company can secure more brands’ exclusive agency rights.

The image shows the nighttime consumption scenario at the Changsha Fisherman’s Wharf. Photo by Guo Liliang

With the wave of digitization sweeping through, new formats and new models such as live-stream e-commerce, short-video e-commerce, and instant retail are flourishing. Location advantages are no longer a “safe harbor” for brands; competitors may no longer be the store across the street or the neighboring mall, but instead a cloud live-stream room and online shops far away.

That is also why the market is showing a sharply different kind of split: some stores in the May 1 business district still cling to old thinking—fighting for the market by sticking to prime locations and exclusive agency rights. Even with golden locations, they still can’t escape the fate of sharply reduced passenger flow. Meanwhile, more new consumer companies have already stepped out of the inherent boundary of the local market. They are not confined to one city or one corner, and they proactively lay out their commercial territory across a broader world.

A story of a new-style Chinese tea brand in Changsha is quite representative. In recent years, this brand has stepped out of the regional limitation of offline stores and opened up a “second growth curve” from within—expanding into the snack segment. Its snack e-commerce segment’s sales in 2025 exceeded 100 million yuan. Outwardly, it has entered the North American market through a “pure e-commerce” model, building multi-category lines such as snacks, stationery, and daily necessities, achieving full-line product and brand output overseas.

In this competition of “decentralization,” whether a brand can break regional barriers and develop the survival skills for full-scenario, full-domain penetration is becoming ever more important.

—The third overturn: puncture the traffic bubble; return to the essence of the product.

“In today’s information overload, consumers increasingly don’t like being sold to. Pure marketing ‘planting grass’ can easily make them feel repulsed too. Content-based recommendations with less marketing flavor and a stronger ‘real-person’ feel are what young people like,” said Li Mei, a blogger who does store visits and reviews, telling the reporter.

Looking back, in many places, a group of brands have quickly become popular by relying on traffic plays. They heat up the buzz through traffic placements; they create hit products. It seems that as long as the products are decent and you catch channel dividends, you can blow up overnight and quickly scale up.

Changsha Fisherman’s Wharf at night. Photo by Guo Liliang

But now, this playbook is gradually becoming ineffective. As mainstream consumers’ perceptions and decision-making become more mature and rational, demand for quality consumption far exceeds before. The illusion of “traffic is king, shouting wins” has been shattered. Commercial competition is returning to the essence of products and services. It’s no longer about “who is louder and has more traffic,” but about “who goes deeper and has tougher products.”

Take, for example, a Changsha new-style Chinese baking brand that once became a sensation. At its peak, it expanded quickly by leveraging traffic to create hype, and its valuation once approached 2 billion yuan. Yet after the market returned to rationality, it exposed weaknesses: insufficient product strength, an unstable supply chain, and uncontrolled quality control. In the end, it fell behind amid fierce competition.

By contrast, brands that gradually established a foothold in Changsha did so with hard-core product strength. Some food and beverage companies focused deeply on the single dish of stir-fried pork with peppers for more than ten years, making everyday home-cooked dishes into industry-leading standardized, high-quality versions. Some tea beverage enterprises insisted on ingredient upgrades and product iteration, refused blind expansion, and protected product reputation. Some retail companies, by exercising extreme supply chain control, strove to keep value-for-money and quality control at the front of the industry…

The ultimate contest is all about “people.”

As the traffic dividend gradually recedes, the external coordinates of commercial competition are being fully rebuilt, and a more core proposition comes to the surface: when competition returns to essentials, what exactly will the brands that truly get through the cycle and keep winning compete on?

In the evening, residents and tourists at Changsha Fisherman’s Wharf. Photo by Guo Liliang

Many industry experts and company leaders interviewed all agreed: supply chain, products, channels, and marketing are all necessary conditions—but the ultimate contest is “people.”

First, compete by reading “people’s hearts” and grasping the new era’s consumers’ urgent needs.

If the underlying logic of commercial competition is a complete reversal from “supply-led” to “demand-led,” then the core of domestic demand growth is whether you can see the consumer needs that are being concealed and match them precisely.

“Consumers’ needs have upgraded from functional needs to value needs such as emotional resonance, cultural resonance, and spiritual resonance. Value-for-money has turned into a focus on price-for-quality,” said Zhang Dandan, president of the Changsha New Consumer Research Institute.

In Huang Si’s view, mainstream consumer concepts are evolving in parallel toward two directions: “extreme practicality” and “extreme non-practicality.”

“Practicality is aimed at daily consumer goods with high-frequency needs. It shows a trend of higher requirements for value-for-money and price-quality. Decisions become more rational. Non-practicality is aimed at categories related to interests, experiences, and spiritual satisfaction. The demand for emotional value and cultural identity is stronger, and consumers are willing to pay for it,” Huang Si said. In plain terms, it’s like: “Save where you should save, and spend where you should spend.”

In “save where you should save” high-frequency, rigid-need tracks, winners compete with an extreme degree of control over the supply chain and refined operations.

For example, in the leisure snack track where consumers are sensitive to price, Changsha company “Mingming hen mang” upgraded its supply chain through end-to-end digital control and direct connection with manufacturers, optimizing efficiency to lower terminal prices. A 555-milliliter bottle of mineral water costs 1.2 yuan, and a 330-milliliter can of cola costs 1.8 yuan—precisely hitting mainstream consumers’ core need for high value-for-money. Today, “Mingming hen mang” has more than 20,000 stores nationwide, steadily ranking as a “top” player in China’s leisure food retail chain industry. This is achieved through precise matching with “practical” demand.

In “spend where you should spend” experience-driven tracks, if a company can provide consumers with scarce emotional comfort and strong cultural identity, consumers will be willing to pay a premium for that value. Fishing enthusiasts may wear a basic T-shirt costing 20 yuan, but in their hands they swing premium fishing rods worth tens of thousands. Young consumers may camp through online and offline nights to snatch a blind box from an IP they like. Countless tourists also flock to Changsha, willing to wait a long time just to have a bite of “Chef Fei’s” stir-fried pork with peppers, buy a cup of “Chá Yán Yuè” Chinese-style milk tea, and taste the “Black Classic” stinky tofu. They’re buying not just food itself, but also Changsha’s unique consumption experience, cultural resonance, and emotional satisfaction.

This seemingly contradictory misalignment in consumer psychology precisely reflects what is being competed for now: either make supply chain efficiency to the extreme and precisely match consumers’ rational needs; or make user empathy to the extreme and precisely satisfy consumers’ emotional needs.

Second, ignite creativity and break out of “involution.”

Although the market competition shows a side of returning to rationality, “involution” remains a high-frequency word that won’t go away. Once a segment releases a dividend, many businesses who want shortcuts rush in, and the market quickly becomes filled with homogenous products that look similar and have no differentiated selling points. In the end, most businesses are forced into “price wars,” squeezing costs, and even sacrificing product quality to gain market share. This situation is destined to have no real winners: companies lose profits and have no money for innovation; consumers can’t buy good products; the entire industry can only spin in low-level competition.

On Changsha Huangxing South Road Pedestrian Street, in recent years, more and more sauce-board duck shops have opened. Product flavors, packaging styles, and even the promotional sales talk used to advertise are all largely the same. Some shops, to grab customer traffic, directly shout absurdly low prices—only to make consumers uneasy about product quality, ultimately ending up in the awkward situation of “more check-ins, fewer purchases.”

“The essence of ‘involution’ is homogeneity. The only way to crack it is innovation,” said Huang Si. Only by accurately understanding consumers’ needs and continuously evolving and iterating can innovation break the “involution.”

The evolution of Changsha’s tea beverage industry is, in fact, a road of breaking the “volcano.”

A practitioner introduced that in the early years, pearl milk tea swept across Changsha streets. Back then, innovation barriers were low: as long as merchants replaced milk creamer with fresh milk and replaced sugar creamer with natural sweeteners, they could attract consumers. Later, competition intensified. Major brands made changes in raw materials and flavors, launching all kinds of new categories such as lemon tea, hawthorn tea, and tea coffee—expanding the tea beverage track by several times.

“Where flavor innovation comes from is agricultural products. Agricultural innovation has a cycle; it’s impossible to create an entirely new variety in just one or two years,” said Huang Si. Once flavor innovation also hit a ceiling, Changsha tea beverage brands changed their track again through creativity—first by focusing on culture: taking the route of national style, doing distinctive cultural and creative products, and organizing cross-industry collaborations. A cup of milk tea became not just a drink to quench thirst, but also carried emotional and cultural value.

Through innovation built in a chain of links, Changsha won the “jianghu title” of an important source of new-style tea beverages.

Changsha also has a “jianghu title” of “a city of entertainment.” Behind this name, besides the widely known “Guangdian Xiangjun” (Hunan TV and media industry forces), it also relies on local performing arts practitioners who persist in innovation and keep fighting for content.

Around the early 2000s, “Karaoke hall culture” was popular in Changsha. At one time, there were more than 150 karaoke halls of all sizes, combining singing, dancing, and sketch comedy and stand-up. Later, consumer tastes changed. The traditional large karaoke hall model became increasingly homogeneous; old audiences couldn’t be retained, and young people didn’t want to come, making business harder and harder to run.

To get out of this predicament, everyone started thinking about new ideas, constantly iterating performance formats. Especially in recent years, the introduction of “small theaters” has helped. By immersive interactive experiences and continually updated content, they won back young people’s preferences.

“An average small theater’s lifecycle is only about 2 years,” said Chen Lu, deputy general manager of Hunan Zhenzhen Riyang Culture and Creative Co., Ltd. The company’s small theater production “The Crazy Barber Shop,” after 634 performances, voluntarily stopped and launched a new show at the same time. “The upfront investment isn’t small, but what audiences need is fresh and interesting content.”

This hard focus on content innovation quickly received positive feedback from the market. In the same business district, the brand staged “Crazy Star Friends Troupe,” which kept the core style while bringing brand-new content again. It was once again popular. The number of performances is expected to quickly reach about 400. Many longtime audiences were willing to watch it again and even multiple times.

These new brands that can cut through the competition, by continuously iterating through innovation, dig deep into even finer, more vertical niche tracks. This innovative capability not only helps a brand stand firm in competition, it also carries Changsha’s entire consumer market—transforming it from the past “internet-famous check-in spots” that relied on traffic to attract attention into a “everlasting high ground” that retains people through quality and value.

Why is it Changsha?

This “new wave of commerce” sweeping through Changsha has generated a large number of energetic new consumer brands, and it has also rebuilt a whole new logic for commercial competition.

As the interviews deepened, a key question prompted the reporter to think: Why can Changsha become a nationally recognized “testing ground” for new consumer fields? Even among some practitioners, a consensus has formed: “If new consumption wants to take off, go to Changsha and do experiments first.” The answer to this question gradually surfaced as the visits continued.

The image shows the night view of Changsha. Photo by Zhao Yihai

One side is the power of an “invisible hand,” deeply rooted in the city’s consumption culture, and reinforced by relatively low cost of living that gives consumers confidence, and by an open and inclusive market environment. On the other side is the power of a “visible hand,” lifting the industry through targeted guidance, support, and protection.

—A touch of fireworks atmosphere nurtures consumer power.

“Changsha’s new consumption grows out of fireworks atmosphere,” said Huang Si. Changsha people love to consume, know how to live, and know how to have fun—this is in their nature. Even if only 10 yuan is left in your pocket, you still have to spend 9 yuan first to slurp a bowl of rice noodles—that’s the first nutrient for new consumer brands to grow.

And the confidence to dare to consume comes from this city’s support. Data show that in 2025, Changsha residents’ per capita disposable income reached 66,300 yuan, ranking first among regions in central China; among trillion-yuan GDP cities across the country, Changsha has always maintained a relatively low housing price level.

Over the past 10 years, Changsha’s accumulated net population inflow has exceeded 3 million, with about 80% being young people. Changsha has become one of the cities where young people are most willing to take root, and this has also accumulated a large user base for new consumer brands—multiple demands, and a willingness to try new things.

“People in Changsha are willing to pay for what they love and to spend on experiences. They dare to try new things and chase the trend,” Huang Si said. The traits of this group—“dare to consume, be willing to consume, and know how to consume”—are exactly the core ground for new consumer brands to validate their business models.

Moreover, Changsha’s thriving night economy is an extension line of the “new wave of commerce.” As a nationally known “city that never sleeps,” even at 5:01 (May 1) business district at dawn, the streets still stay full of people. Data show that the peak of nighttime consumption in Changsha is one hour later than the national average. When some inland cities in China’s interior are preparing to turn off lights and close shops at 8 p.m., Changsha’s prime consumption window has only just begun.

—Cultural genes empower innovative vitality.

On the internet, many netizens have marveled: “Changsha is really so ‘good at it’!”

Why does Changsha excel at making consumers feel moved and turning consumption intent into consumption behavior? The cultural gene embedded deep in the city’s lifeblood is an indispensable core driving force.

Several new consumer entrepreneurs said that in Changsha, the same people might be involved in both running brands and producing shows. The rise of new consumption in Changsha has a close relationship with nearly 30 years of industry accumulation from “Guangdian Xiangjun.” Many of the local new consumer brands that broke through carried core teams with cultural media genes. They can precisely capture mainstream demand, understand users’ emotions and cultural needs, and are good at narrative through content. When these capabilities are transferred to the consumption domain, it can create a near “different dimension” impact on traditional marketing.

Deeper innovation momentum comes from the spiritual core of Huxiang culture: being bold to lead and putting knowledge into practical use. Liu Jia gang, associate professor at the Business School of Central South University, believes that “being bold to lead” makes Changsha entrepreneurs unafraid of trying and failing, while “putting knowledge into practical use” ensures that brands always anchor to real consumer needs and turn innovation into practice in consumption—without doing hollow, market-detached hype.

This cultural gene supplies creative talent to the new consumer tracks—people who understand users and are skilled at communication. At the same time, it injects bottom-line motivation into brand innovation through a spiritual core etched deep into the bones.

—“Pouring water and nurturing fish”: patient care for brand growth.

If the market’s “invisible hand” gives Changsha new consumption its growth confidence, then the government’s “visible hand” provides a full-cycle escort for that growth through a “pour water and nurture fish” kind of patience.

Strolling along the Huangxing South Road Pedestrian Street, you see shopfront signs at different heights and with distinct features. Under the neon lights and shadows, street life is full of vitality. Tourists stop to watch, pose for photos, and check in. Even Chinese diplomats recommend this fireworks scene to the world through social media. Behind this scene is the city’s management approach—tolerant and inclusive, respecting merchants and their individuality—providing broad growth space for new consumption operating entities.

Residents and tourists enjoy the Huangxing South Road pedestrian commercial street in Changsha. Photo by Shi Liang

This “pour water and nurture fish” care is not just about giving enterprises room for growth. It also provides precise institutional support that directly addresses industry pain points.

For example, in response to industry characteristics such as flexible employment for new consumption formats and high-demand fluctuations, Changsha identified key pain points in traditional recruitment where supply and demand are mismatched and protection for new gig workers is insufficient. Starting in February 2023, it operated the first national new-consumption gig market in the country, building a full-chain service system covering job recruitment, interviews, contracting, scheduling, payroll, and insurance.

By the end of 2025, the market had served nearly 8,000 enterprises, completing more than 800,000 job recruitments. Along with supplemental accident insurance for new gig workers, it provided relatively comprehensive coverage for 382,000 person-times of new gig workers, and also offered systemic support for flexible development in new consumption.

“Through the new-consumption gig worker market, our companies’ needs for flexible staffing are met, especially solving the urgent staffing issues during holidays and festivals.” said Xie Zhen, co-founder of “Mo Mo Dianxin Ju,” to the reporter.

Represented by “Mo Mo Dianxin Ju,” new-style Chinese baking is a benchmark category in Changsha’s new consumer track. Flexible staffing demand is strong as well, making it one of the key areas served by the Changsha new-consumption gig worker market.

From precise services that solve specific pain points to a systematically improved top-level policy system, Changsha’s support for the development of the consumer economy progresses step by step.

In 2019, Hunan Province’s first “Night Economy Service Center” was established in Tianxin District, Changsha. Administrative services were extended into the night when fireworks soar. Departments proactively led enterprises to connect with business departments in target markets and secured policy support, helping enterprises solve development difficulties in real ways.

In 2022, the Changsha New Consumer Research Institute was established. From industry research, strategic consulting, to investment incubation, it provides full lifecycle services for new consumer enterprises—from startup to maturity. It also simultaneously built cultivation platforms such as “Unicorn Accelerator Camps” and “New Consumer Lecture Halls.” Over more than three years, it has provided systematic training for over 300 enterprise middle and senior management personnel, improving enterprise management and operations in all dimensions and helping brands advance steadily.

In 2025, Hunan Province’s Department of Commerce and Department of Finance issued several policy measures to promote high-quality development of Hunan’s first-to-launch economy. It innovatively proposed “supporting the cultivation and incubation of local new consumer brands.” Through reward and subsidy policies, it encourages local new consumer brands to intensify innovation in new products, new formats, new models, new services, and new technologies, so that innovation vitality in new consumption can be further released.

Today, cultivating new consumer brands has become a shared consensus across all of Changsha.

“As a company in Changsha, we feel very happy,” said Du Qiao, brand department director of Fei Dachu Stir-Fried Pork with Peppers. Today, “Chef Fei” has opened more than 200 direct-operated stores in places such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. This is not only due to the improvement of Changsha’s city visibility, but also thanks to a series of policies supporting innovation and development of Hunan cuisine.

Foodies wait in line in front of a restaurant in Changsha. Photo by Lu Wenwei

A relevant负责人 from Changsha’s Municipal Bureau of Commerce said, “We hope, with the patience of ‘pour water and nurture fish,’ and through policy innovation and service upgrades, to build a full-dimensional new consumption ecosystem, providing full-cycle escort for brand growth, and protecting every entrepreneurial dream.”

What has the “new wave of commerce” “won” in competition?

In recent years, emerging formats such as self-fulfillment consumption, cultural consumption, and experience-based consumption have sprouted like bamboo shoots and become new driving forces for growth in the consumer market.

Against the backdrop where structural differentiation in the consumer market is increasingly visible, Changsha’s “new wave of commerce” has been intensifying. Multiple entrepreneurs and research experts believe this competition is far from a traditional “zero-sum game.” Instead, it is a metamorphosis that reconstructs industrial ecosystems and consolidates market confidence. It not only activates the vigorous vitality of the local consumer market, but also provides a spicy and real practice sample for upgrading business nationwide and improving consumption quality.

Residents and tourists take photos of the Du Fu River Pavilion in Changsha. Photo by Sheng Long

—The “new wave of commerce” has produced a “sky full of stars” pattern in the consumer market, fostering clusters of locally strong brands.

In 2025, Changsha’s total retail sales of consumer goods reached 573.893 billion yuan, up 3.9% year on year, with a growth rate higher than the national average.

For many years, competition in Changsha’s local consumer market mainly involved outside brands fighting for channels and competing on price, making it difficult for local merchants to become the main characters. But now, a large number of local new consumer enterprises have quickly risen and become the core force in the consumer market. According to data from the Changsha New Consumer Research Institute, Changsha currently has more than 140 influential and active new consumer brands, covering multiple fields such as catering retail, cosmetics and sports, original design, and cross-border e-commerce. They contribute annual output value exceeding 150 billion yuan and create million-level employment.

“Consumers’ increasingly diverse niche preferences and personalized demands have created an entirely new space for incremental growth in the consumer market, providing opportunities for different brands to redeploy and compete in a differentiated way.” Zhang Dandan said. With the arrival of a new generation of consumer entrepreneurs entering as “owners/operators,” they no longer blindly chase scale expansion. Instead, they deeply cultivate niche tracks, refine products, shape brands, and operate users. This has brought “sky full of stars”-style development opportunities to niche segments and special businesses.

—The “new wave of commerce” has produced genuine skills in enterprises adapting to the market and governments providing precise services.

In Zheng Zili, a researcher at the Hunan Academy of Social Sciences’ view, this “new wave of commerce” is both a “training ground” for enterprises to hone core competitiveness and a “touchstone” for local governments to understand new laws of the consumption economy and improve governance service capabilities.

“There’s no need to be overly anxious about the natural exit of old formats. Only by eliminating backward and ineffective supply can we make room in the market for high-quality innovative supply.” Zheng Zili said. Many enterprises, under market pressure, have figured out the underlying logic of the consumption market in the new era and learned to break deadlocks through innovation. Governments, in practice, have also learned to fully understand the development laws of the consumption economy and enhance the ability to provide targeted services to operating entities.

The story of “Zhadui” (楂堆), a local Changsha brand of hawthorn-ingredient-for-medicine-and-food tea beverage, is a microcosm of how core competitiveness is forged in market competition. Its founder, Mou Yongsheng, said, “In the future, we will more actively follow consumption trends and work harder in product innovation, scenario creation, and service optimization, deeply matching consumption needs and launching more competitive products and services.” This also represents the consensus of countless local brands in Changsha.

As enterprises grow and advance, government departments have also stepped out of the inertia thinking found in traditional commercial governance, such as heavy approvals, light services, and strong intervention. Through more inclusive and prudent regulation, and precise and in-place services, they achieve a systematic upgrade of governance service capabilities.

A relevant负责人 from Changsha’s Municipal Bureau of Commerce told the reporter that in promoting the high-quality development of consumption, Changsha always grasps two core points: “First, fully respect market laws and do not interfere with the normal survival of the fittest. Second, create an inclusive and open consumer ecosystem, and provide enterprise support across the full cycle and in multiple dimensions through precise and flexible policy tools.”

—The “new wave of commerce” has competed out firm confidence in industry development and clarified the underlying logic of consumption transformation.

“The core for judging consumption upgrades is not whether the price of a single product is high or low, but whether the consumption structure is optimized. The steady increase in the proportion of service consumption is precisely the core sign of consumption upgrade.” said Li Jiang, a young entrepreneur. Consumers are not unwilling to consume or afraid to consume; rather, they are unwilling to buy products and services that are homogenous and have unstable quality control. High-quality supply that truly matches demand will always earn market recognition.

According to Ministry of Commerce data, in 2025, China’s service retail sales increased by 5.5% year on year. Residents’ per capita spending on services increased by 4.5% year on year, and services accounted for 46.1% of residents’ per capita consumption spending.

“Service consumption has become a core incremental source driving residents’ consumption growth,” said Du Guoqing, a professor at the School of Advertising and Brand at Communication University of China. In terms of long-term development potential, there is still broad room for expansion in service consumption fields such as catering, tourism, culture, and sports—these are core focus points for boosting consumption and expanding domestic demand.

This profound transformation in consumption structure is happening truly and directly on the streets and alleys of Changsha.

“Now the consumption玩法 and the quality of supply are undergoing comprehensive upgrades,” a self-media blogger said after visiting stores. “In the past, stinky tofu was mostly street stalls with messy surroundings and poor sanitary guarantees, with a typical per-visit spend of around 5 to 6 yuan. Now, a batch of new and emerging brands focus on upgrading needs related to food safety, consumption experience, and cultural value. They don’t just build fully finished flagship stores and upgrade offline experiences; they also launch diverse product forms like semi-finished products, vacuum-packed items, and gift boxes—breaking the scenario limitations of street snacks and tearing off the stereotyped label of ‘low-end,’ turning this distinctive snack into a shining city card.”

From extensive, homogenized competition to brand self-awareness driven by user needs, this “new wave of commerce” in Changsha is a vivid example of supply-side structural reform in the consumer sector. It also contains hope and vitality for self-optimization and sustained upward momentum in China’s consumer market.

“To make people dare to consume and enjoy consuming,” said Zheng Zili. “To promote higher-quality consumption upgrades, the core is to return to the essence of consumption and focus on people’s true needs, so that consumption can truly become an important carrier of a better life and improving the quality of living.”

On the surface, this “new wave of commerce” in Changsha is a short-term game between brands. In reality, it is a long-term contest running alongside China’s consumption upgrades. Like sifting through sand for gold, those who row forward will prevail first. On this fertile land, the practices that have taken shape will continue to provide vivid, referable samples and never-ending vitality for the high-quality development of China’s consumer market. (Reporter Chen Jun, Zhou Nan, Zhang Ge, Chang Junfei)

Source: Xinhua News Agency Telegraph (Xinhua News)