Carrefour's hypermarkets in China are the Bosporus of retailing—commercial centers where East and West splash against each other. Tanks of live fish, eels, bullfrogs, and turtles dominate the fresh-food sections, while vacuum-packed strips of bacon and slices of pepperoni lie in refrigerated cases a short distance away. Modern formats mix with local tastes in the French retailer's stores: shoppers stroll down wide, brightly lit aisles, past displays of dried pork snouts and whole ducks hanging limply by the neck, as "Hotel California" plays on the speakers overhead.
Carrefour, whose name means "crossroads," wasn't the first foreign retailer in mainland China to open a hypermarket—a giant outlet that offers "everything under one roof," from consumer electronics to groceries. But since the company opened its first store, in 1995, it has become the largest. Today it operates 73 hypermarkets in 29 cities,1 from Urumqi (in the western reaches of the Middle Kingdom) to Harbin (near the Russian border) to Kunming (in the south). Carrefour also operates the Champion supermarkets and Dia convenience stores. Its 2005 turnover was about $2 billion (including value-added tax), making China Carrefour's fifth-largest market. The company expects its sales in China to go on growing by 25...