【正文】 1 / 7To make money from the expansion of the Chinese market, most oil panies will have to sell much more than gasoline.JONATHAN R. WOETZEL The McKinsey Quarterly, 2022 Number 3CChina 抯 automotive market is predicted to be the third largest in the world by The acpanying growth in demand for gasoline and related car fuel products 梒 ombined with government plans to deregulate the sector and the need to address the chronic inefficiency of current distribution 梥 hould create a juicy opportunity for multinational oil panies as well as for China 抯 two domestic giants, PetroChina and Sinopec.Gasoline reaches the huge Chinese market through a fragmented retail and distribution work of about 90,000 stations, almost all state owned. Many are run more as sinecures than as businesses, often with a staff four to five times larger than the international norm but with less than a quarter of the average gasoline throughput of US stations. The Chinese government, which is well aware of the problem, has resolved not to allow the country 抯 energy infrastructure to burden the whole economy: it is fast deregulating the sector, which will be fully opened up to foreign panies in 2022 under the mitments attending the country 抯 membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Foreign oil panies have hitherto been restricted to oneoff local deals in special economic zones or tied to investments in tollroad construction.Although the stage should thus be set for canny corporations to move into the market, it remains unclear how they will make money. Competition is already driving down retail margins on gasoline, while prices for the best station sites have soared as China 抯 large domestic oil panies have rushed to buy them. Oil panies in the West facing similar margin pressures know that most gasoline stations are viable only if they offer generalretail facilities at least as large as a convenience store, in addition to gasoline. This is true in China as well. The highestvolume sites might be made profitable on their fuel revenues alone, but the rest need substantial nonfuel revenues to make a profit.The strategic implications are clear. In China as elsewhere, the first decision for an oil pany is whether to own and operate sites or merely to supply them with gasoline. If the pany opts for ownership, it has a choice: to adopt a retail strategy and pursue nonfuel revenues from a portfolio of retail sites or to target only the highestvolume sites, using them to build a highquality gasoline brand that can also be offered through independent retailers. At present, the Chinese oil majors are pursuing neither strategy。 they have simply rushed to grab any available site, where they sell as much petroleumbased product as possible while ignoring the retail potential. The multinationals have been more judicious in selecting sites for their initial joint ventures, but they too have neglected the strategic choice. Unless all of these panies, domestic and international alike, change tack, their investments in expensive Chinese real estate may unravel.THE MARKET AND SITE ECONOMICSChina 抯 dominant oil panies are Sinopec, in the south and east, and PetroChina, which has the more prehensive refinery and distribution work of the two, in the north and west (Exhibit 1). The two panies aim to capture, between them, 70 percent of China 抯 gasoline sales volume by 2022. Since their IPOs, in 2022, they have invested heavily in petroleumrelated infrastructure and 2 / 7in brand building. Having already raised their share of sales to more than 40 percent and secured most of the prime sites in the biggest cities, they are on track to meet this target.Until 2022, multinational panies will be allowed to own outright only the 300 or so sites they now possess through local deals struck before government deregulation of foreign investment in the sector, in the mid1990s, but they can build up their holdings through joint ventures with Chinese panies. BP, ExxonMobil, and Royal Dutch/Shell are establishing joint ventures with PetroChina and Sinopec by contributing capital for the purchase of sites and by supplying highermargin premium