China's annual shopping venue breaks up again

Network buyers in China have split last year's record of $ 24 billion in sales of the country's annual purchase freeze on Sunday, when tradition marked its tenth year.

Expenses have for many years explained Cyber ​​Monday in the United States for online purchases made on a single day. This year's tally breaks from bad forecasts of the world's second largest economy, struggling with a tariff war with the US, a stock market battle and slow overall growth.

Known as Singles Day was clinging to offers and discounts honored with the characteristic fanfare of the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, who has turned an unofficial vacation for people without romantic partners in an annual storm for digital dealers.

A massive display on Alibaba's gala in Shanghai showed the increasing real-time sales figures: In 2 minutes and 5 seconds after midnight on Saturday, 1[ads1]0 billion yuan ($ 1.43 billion) in purchases was already made on Alibaba platforms. At 1 hour and 47 minutes, the number had increased ten times.

Just before 4 o'clock on Sunday, sales reached 168.2 billion yuan (24.2 billion yuan) – exceeded the total purchases from last year's Singles Day, according to the figures released by Alibaba Group.

Singles Day began as a spoof event celebrated by foreign Chinese students in the 1990s. In Chinese, it is called "Double 11", according to the numbers of the month and date. The improvised vacation was traded by e-dealers in 2009 and converted to China's version of Cyber ​​Monday, which is known Monday after Thanksgiving.

Almost 6.6 billion dollars in sales were made on Cyber ​​Monday in 2017, up 17 percent from last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

Ren Xiaotong, a 27-year-old accountant in Beijing, said she suspected that online stores beat up their prizes in Singles Day management so they could declare that items were discounted.

But in the end, her skepticism did not prevent her from participating.

"Singles Day is different now – it has more tricks than before," said Ren. "You only save a few dozens of yuan at the end. That's said, I still bought a pair of shoes, just to celebrate the festival."

The Twitter-like Weibo platform was blanketed with Singles Day-related posts on Sunday, from users who proudly told that they had resisted the need for action this year to those who encouraged a lot of everyday purchases.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who will go down as leader in less than a year, attended the start of the Shanghai Gala in Shanghai and appeared in a video announcement where he wrapped up live scraps, a popular online shopping.

Singles Day is not a discount day, but rather a day of gratitude, Ma said in the video. "It's when retailers use the best products and the best prices to show their gratitude to our consumers."

Chinese e-commerce platforms have been burned in the past to cool down low-quality and counterfeit objects. Hong Tao, an economics professor at Beijing Technology and Business University, said that Singles Day encourages buyers to prioritize cheap, high-quality prices that make them buy goods they do not need.

"People get swept up in the parties" Hong said in a telephone interview. "This use of use, limited to just one day, can be exhausting for both buyers and sellers."

The reason is also great environmental impacts.

While both Alibaba and competitor JD.com have promised to use biodegradable packaging to waste waste, surveys conducted this month by Greenpeace East As In other words, many plastics labeled "biodegradable" and used by Chinese e-dealers can only break down under high temperatures in plants that are limited in number across the country.

Greenpeace estimated that "biodegradable" packaging in 2020 could produce about 721 truckloads of garbage in China every day.