Nicholas Ning/Shanghai Daily news

Police are maintaining order to prevent looting at a money-losing Minhang District hypermarket that closed yesterday after one-year operation, without paying suppliers or rent.
Still, many goods at the 17,000-square-meter Shanghai SMS Supermarket on Shuiqing Road have been seized by angry suppliers, who were not informed of the closing and continued their supplies until a couple of days ago.
This is the second time in one month that a supermarket has closed abruptly in the city, for financial reasons.
Late last month, a supermarket chain based in Baoshan District closed its four branches, also without paying its suppliers or encashing its shopping coupons issued to consumers.
Zhang Zhiwei, the SMS store manager, said it had been losing money for a long time, and attributed the poor business to the site location, which became less desirable after another hypermarket opened just 300 meters away in August.
Though the SMS Supermarket put the blame on its property management agent for a cut-off of power supply, its landlord said the market management had actually reached an agreement to close on October 1 due to low business.
The supermarket is a brand under the US-based SMS Group, the Shanghai SMS Shopping Co claimed on its Website. It has several branches in central Shanxi Province where it has a good business there, and it opened the local branch last September.
The supermarket issued a notice to its nearly 400 suppliers yesterday afternoon under local government mediation, promising to return all the goods to suppliers this morning, and finish calculation of payment of goods within a week.
Aquatic products
But it didn't say when it would pay for supplies, rent or pay employees.
"They still owe us nearly 90,000 yuan (US$11,111) for our supply in August and September. We doubt if they have the money to pay us," said an aquatic products company official surnamed Huang.
Huang said their loss was not the worst, as he heard some food suppliers lost 600,000 yuan in unpaid goods.
What's more, the supermarket owed its landlord, Shanghai Fengding Real Estate Development Co, 2.7 million yuan rent and 1 million yuan in electricity fees, since it started business last year.
"We suggested they close because it was so difficult to maintain operations early this year, or they would face bigger economic losses," said Fengding Real Estate Director surnamed Jin.
According to Jin, the supermarket promised in a document to close on October 1, with the understanding that no rent would be charged for October or November.
The market promised to repay debts but did not say when.