(ECNS) -- A planned bar cluster in China's southern city of Guangzhou has failed to prosper as expected, one major reason being that the younger generation spends more time on virtual networking than on real life socializing, reports Guangzhou Daily.
Local industry insiders revealed that the number of bars in Guangzhou has dropped markedly over the past decade, from about 1,500 to only 500.
On Bai'E Tan Bar Street in Liwan district, a major tourism project initiated ten years ago with an investment of 400 million yuan (about $62.7 million) has shrunk by two thirds in business, and bar owners are struggling to survive.
There were an estimated 700 bars in the area during 2002, almost twice the scale of the actual market at that time, according to Liu An from the Guangdong Academy of Social Science.
When analyzing declining bar business, Wang Zhenfeng, head of the industry's association in Guangzhou's Huadu district, said the changing lifestyle of customers, especially the younger generation, is a much bigger threat for bar owners compared to the overcrowded market.
Rather than spending nights out, more and more young people born in the 1980s and 1990s are tied to computer screens, Wang explained. That means bars are losing their most hopeful market.
A latest report by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) shows that the country had more than 668 million internet users as of June, 2015, nearly half of the country's population, with 78.4% aged between 10 and 39.
