(Yicai) Oct. 22 -- Sam’s Club, the warehouse club chain owned by US retail giant Walmart, is accelerating its expansion into China’s lower-tier markets such as county-level cities where rising spending power contrasts with limited room for new growth the first-tier cities.

Sam's Club opened a new big box store in Zhangjiagang, under the jurisdiction of Suzhou in Jiangsu province, on Oct. 20, making it the bulk retailer’s third outlet in a county-level city and its fourth in Suzhou.

Sam's Club’s previous two county-level stores are in Kunshan, also under Suzhou, and Jinjiang in Fujian province. The Arkansas-based company is also building a fourth in Jiangyin in Jiangsu, with plans to open another in Yiwu, a city known for hosting the world's biggest wholesale market for small commodities.

Sam's Club has 58 stores in China, most of which are located in the country's four first-tier cities -- Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen -- as well as the eastern economically developed provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

The county-level cities chosen by Sam's Club all have strong economies. Kunshan and Jiangyin each had gross domestic products of more than CNY500 billion (USD70.2 billion) last year, making them some of China’s wealthiest county-level cities, while Zhangjiagang and Jinjiang each had GDPs above CNY300 billion.

China’s county and rural economies have grown quickly in recent years, local retail networks have improved, and household spending has risen. These markets accounted for nearly 40 percent of retail consumer goods sales in the nine months ended Sept. 30, according to figures released by the National Bureau of Statistics.

Other global consumer brands are also expanding in China’s lower-tier markets. For example, Starbucks entered 166 new county-level markets in the fiscal year 2024, with coffee shops in more than 1,000 counties, according to its annual financial report.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Martin Kadiev