China's Singles Day Sales in the Dark

This year's Singles Day sales were seen as lacklustre

In yet another sign that China's economy is slowing down, the much-anticipated Singles Day yesterday, the Chinese equivalent to Black Friday showed consumer not that confident in spending their hard-earned money.

Alibaba, the behemoth that came up with the commercialised Singles Day on November 11 promoting online shopping, used to show off the latest tally of sales in a giant billboard. But this was the second year that it did not disclose numbers. Nor did it have top acts like Taylor Swift or Katy Perry to ramp up sales even further.

In 2019 Taylor Swift entertained shoppers

Data provider Syntun estimated that the gross merchandising value across all e-commerce platforms only rose 2.08 percent to 1.14 trillion yuan (US$156 billion), compared to 2.9 percent last year. Major retailers like Alibaba and JD.com already slashed prices too.

JD.com claimed its orders were at a record high, but did not say what the numbers were, while China's State Post Bureau claimed its express delivery volume hit a record high, an increase of more than 23 percent between November 1-11 compared to the previous year.

China claims its economy rose 4.9 percent in the third quarter, enabling it to hit Beijing's target of 5 percent growth for this year. However, Goldman Sachs analysts are forecasting household consumption will fall from 8.5 percent to 6 percent in 2024. As a result, the GDP is expected to be 4.8 percent next year.

There are concerns that if this consumer malaise continues, the government will have to inject more government stimulus to get people to shop again in physical or virtual malls...