This Day, That Year: Aug 5

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

In 1996, high-end French retailer Galeries Lafayette opened its first store in China.

An item from Aug 5, 1997, in China Daily showed a Beijing resident selecting clothing at the store. That year, the central government approved 16 foreign-funded ventures as the country gradually opened up its retail sector.

Since then, major department stores are cashing in on China's insatiable appetite for foreign products.

Galeries Lafayette returned to the capital in 2013, 15 years after the French retailer closed its only store in Beijing due to poor sales. It is planning to open about 10 stores and achieve revenue of more than $1 billion by 2025 in China.

In 2011, US retailer Macy's started offering shipments to the country, encouraged by the heavy traffic on its websites from Chinese shoppers.

As online business flourishes, physical stores are losing customers.

The 130-year-old British retailer Marks& Spencer shut all of its 10 stores in the Chinese mainland. Its branch in Beijing was closed in 2017.

To meet the changing shopping habits of Chinese consumers, Marks& Spencer opened stores on Tmall and JD, two of the largest online marketplaces in China.

In 2016, US e-commerce behemoth Amazon launched Amazon Prime in China to grab a bigger share of the lucrative market.

In July, Amazon shut down its third-party seller services on its Chinese online marketplace as it shifts its focus to the cross-border e-commerce, cloud services and e-reader devices in the country.

Customers logging in to Amazon's Chinese web portal can only see a selection of overseas goods from its global store, rather than products from local third-party sellers.