Uniqlo picks Shanghai for biggest store Uniqlo has chosen China, site of recent demonstrations against its home country Japan, to open its largest store later this year. The new 6,600 sq m outlet will be in Shanghai, where the clothing chain opened a global flagship store almost three years ago. That shop, in Shanghai's premier Nanjing West Road, has done a brisk trade since opening in May 2010, including during anti-Japan protests in the city last September. "We have wanted to open . . . our largest flagship store worldwide in Shanghai for quite some time," said Pan Ning, China chief executive of Fast Retailing, the company that owns Uniqlo. Uniqlo opened its first store in China in 2002 and had 189 retail locations in the mainland in March. Fast Retailing said: "Asia, especially China, is the centre for economic growth. We think becoming number one in China means becoming number one in the world. It added: "We will keep focusing on the Asia market." The new Shanghai store will be on the busy commercial thoroughfare, Huaihai Middle Road, and is expected to be substantially larger than the Uniqlo store in Ginza, Toyko, which is currently the largest. Shanghai has been a difficult proving ground for some foreign retailers. Uniqlo's new store will open not far from the imposing edifice of Media Markt, which is due to close after Metro, the German retailer, decided in January to shut all the unit's Chinese stores. Also nearby is the site of the former Barbie global flagship store, opened with huge fanfare in 2009 and shut two years later. But Uniqlo's Japanese nationality is not viewed as a big problem by retail analysts, despite the fact that China and Japan are still caught up in a territorial dispute that spilled over into violence in several Chinese cities in September. Many Chinese don't even know [Uniqlo] is Japanese. They just love the product," says Shaun Rein, of China Market Research in Shanghai. Chinese in general will buy Japanese products unless something goes bad . . . Even during the protests, I saw one family discuss whether or not to go in: the husband said it was Japanese; the wife said it was not; the grandma said, "Let's just go in."" Torsten Stocker, head of greater China consumer practice at Monitor Deloitte, said: "They sell high-quality, trendy basics and are positioning as a global brand rather than around country of origin - [so are] similar to H&M and Zara from that perspective." Additional reporting by Yan Zhang in Shanghai and Nobuko Juji in Tokyo