This year, several major players, including Joy City, Vipshop, China Green Development, and CR Land, have filed applications to launch commercial property REIT platforms. Meanwhile, the Huaxia CR Consumption REIT, which had previously initiated its first additional issuance and was planning a second one, announced on September 4, 2026, that it would halt this expansion process. This landmark move is poised to reshape the issuance landscape for real estate investment trusts in China, signaling a pivotal shift in the industry’s development focus: commercial property REITs are set to progressively become the market's main track, persistently fueling stock asset M&A, integration, and the normalization of additional issuances and expansions.

Regulatory Framework for Commercial REITs: Reserved Space for "Portfolio Optimization"

At the end of 2025, the CSRC issued the Notice on Promoting the High-Quality Development of the Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) Market (the "Notice") and simultaneously released the CSRC Announcement on Launching the Pilot Program for Commercial Property Real Estate Investment Trusts. Together with 17 supporting rules from exchanges like the Shanghai and Shenzhen bourses, these form the "1+3+N" institutional framework. The Notice emphasizes support for issuing commercial property REITs backed by assets that align with policy direction and possess commercial attributes, while also aiming to improve the efficiency of issuance and listing. It encourages REITs to hold asset portfolios with similar business types, complementary functions, or operational synergies, promoting cross-sector asset consolidation to enhance economies of scale and risk diversification.

The Notice plants seeds for future integration from two angles. On one level, it clarifies the scope of assets eligible for inclusion. With the expansion of the asset pool for issuing commercial property REITs, commercial assets such as shopping malls, office buildings, and hotels now have a standardized securitization exit, offering substantial asset security for the continued growth of commercial property REITs in the future. On another level, it encourages asset optimization and restructuring. This provides policy support for the optimization and combination of assets across multiple platforms under the same original sponsor and reserves institutional room for future consolidation.

Commercial Property REITs vs. Consumption REITs: A Zero-Sum Shift

Since consumption REITs first launched in 2024, their cumulative issuance has reached 28.744 billion RMB. In 2024 alone, issuance totaled 19.8126 billion RMB; by 2025, it had fallen to 10.445 billion RMB; and in 2026, no consumption REIT has yet completed its issuance, marking a clear slowdown. The Jiashi Taoyi Consumption REIT, filed in late August, is still in the review stage and has not been listed. In contrast, commercial property REITs have been "racing onto the track" since the pilot began at the end of 2025. With optimization of the issuance review process and mechanisms, commercial property REITs have seen significant improvements in issuance scale and efficiency since the policy rollout. Listed commercial property REITs have a cumulative issuance scale of 23.163 billion RMB; another 6.397 billion RMB has completed issuance but is awaiting listing; and approved-but-unlisted projects plan to raise approximately 11.141 billion RMB. Combined, these total about 40.7 billion RMB, with full-year issuance potentially exceeding 40 billion RMB. In this contrast of slowing and accelerating paces, commercial property REITs are clearly showing a substitution effect over consumption REITs.

Potential Initiation of Stock Asset Optimization

In terms of issuance scale, consumption REITs and commercial property REITs currently hold comparable stock sizes. However, when looking at growth rates and new issuance volumes, commercial property REITs have already demonstrated a strong catch-up momentum, establishing themselves as a core growth engine in the C-REITs market. At present, CapitaLand and Vipshop have successfully completed dually-listed REIT platforms, staking early claims in the new commercial property REIT track. Companies like Joy City, China Green Development, and CR Land have all moved their commercial property REIT platforms into the filing and review stage, with top-tier industry players accelerating their strategic positioning. Among them, CR Land's strategic pivot is particularly emblematic of industry trends: the company is actively filing a new commercial property REIT platform on one hand, while on the other, it is terminating the expansion process of its mature Huaxia CR Consumption REIT. This "abandoning consumption, turning to commercial" strategic direction by the same original sponsor is the core epitome of the current REIT industry's track iteration and structural reshaping.

A timeline for the Huaxia CR Consumption REIT serves as evidence: On March 25, 2025, it announced its first additional issuance, which was accepted by the exchange on October 14 of that year. On July 18, 2025, it announced another issuance, proposing a second expansion. On April 30, 2026, a name-change announcement was made. Then, on September 4, 2026, it announced the termination of the review process, citing "planning adjustments" as the reason. With consecutive first and second expansion efforts being advanced, yet the first expansion abruptly halted, the consumption REIT "expansion-integration" experiment has stalled. Meanwhile, commercial property REITs are seizing the opportunity to expand. In this push-and-pull dynamic, the trend toward eventual consolidation is beginning to take shape.