A HUGE shopping centre that once boasted canals and was designed to be the “biggest in the world” now lies empty after visitor numbers collapsed.

The mega building had room for more than 2,000 shops and its very own theme park – complete with rollercoaster – but is reportedly near deserted.

The New South China Mall in Dongguan was expected to be the “busiest” in the world when it opened in 2004.

However, recent footage from inside the building shows vast swathes of empty retail units.

The 7million sqft shopping centre was designed like a “small city” with themed areas based on Paris, Venice and California.

Shoppers could travel around on gondolas or even visit the massive cinema.

The location however is said to be part of the reason why the mall has struggled over the years.

“The city of Dongguan is full of factory workers and low income families, not the wealthy shoppers the mall was trying to attract,” reports Built To Collapse.

“On top of that, the mall was built far from busy areas. It didn’t have good public transport and even people living in the city found it hard to get there.”

In 2008, it was forecast that around 99 per cent of the mall was left empty, leading to it being dubbed a “ghost mall”.

The shopping centre underwent a huge renovation in 2015 and saw an uplift in occupancy.

However, when YouTuber Nico visited last year, she found that while some parts of the mall were “thriving,” others were struggling.

She discovered parts of the upper floors were still being renovated.

Nico and her husband Jack also found the theme park had shut down when they visited, with a letter explaining the operator’s lease had expired.

Jack commented: “If we’d come just a few weeks before we could have gone on the train track, we could have gone on the go-karts, we could have gone and stroked the dinosaur.”

Nico and Jack also found problems with the mall’s location.

Nico added: “It’s nowhere near any public transport and Shenzhen and Guangzhou have quite a few malls anyway, so why would people come this far?”

Nico says she had heard the $1.31bn mall had seen a spike in occupancy but found a different picture when she visited.

She explained: “I did read that this mall is almost at full capacity but I think that’s a bit of BS because there are a lot of shops and empty retail spaces, especially in the second and third floor of this building.

“But, on the ground floor though, that is thriving and there’s loads and loads of stuff down there.”

Nico says the decision to move away from luxury shops into businesses that could be sustained by the local population meant it became “more appealing” for people in Dongguan, such as nail bars and smaller stores.

The South China Mall was the brainchild of instant noodle billionaire Hu Guirong.

It remains the fifth-largest shopping centre in the world.

‘A shopper’s paradise’ – inside the Iran Mall

The largest shopping centre in the world is currently occupied by the Iran Mall in Tehran, which boasts more than 3,410,000 sqft of shopping space.

The Iran Mall opened in 2018 and is home to more than 2,500 shops. It has space to park around 20,000 cars.

The shopper’s paradise has everything from gourmet food stalls to the fanciest shops around – despite being in a very surprising location.

The sheer size of the entire mega mall complex takes up the same size as 246 football pitches as it stretches across 21 million sqft.

It is located near to Lake Chitgar in the capital city of Tehran.

The centre was opened in 2018 after 25,000 workers spent four years on construction.

It has been designed to showcase the best modern interpretation of Iranian Islamic architecture.

This has been done through crafted dome roofs, technical arches and hundreds of traditional Iranian ornaments.