Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., moved into the Xiamen free trade area on Feb 3, marking the first Sam's Club store to operate in Xiamen, Fujian province.

The 20,000-square-meter store is located at the Xiangyu bonded logistics industrial park, which is part of the Xiamen FTZ, and sells a wide variety of quality merchandise, including food, clothes, home appliances, and sundries.

As a membership-only warehouse club, Sam's Club helps members to save time and money by selecting cost-efficient products.

Xiong Yanliang, deputy director of the Xiamen FTZ, said that 9,234 companies that have settled in the FTZ have a combined registered capital of 131.5 billion yuan ($20 billion).

There are currently 879 projects in the pipeline to land at the FTZ, involving a total investment of 144 billion yuan.

Edited by Peter Nordlinger