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SHANGHAI – Online shoppers spent more than $ 14 billion during the first two hours of China's annual shopping spree Sunday, breaking records again as consumer tradition enters its 10th year .
The spending frenzy is out of step with the gloomy forecasts for the world's second-largest economy, facing a tariff war with the United States, a slump in the stock market and slowing global growth.
Nicknamed Singles Day, the group of online traders, Alibaba, has enthusiastically announced its enthusiasm for special offers and discounts. He turned unofficial vacations into people without a romantic partner into a boon for digital retailers.
At the Alibaba gala in Shanghai, a giant screen showed the sales figures up in real time: at 2 minutes and 5 seconds after midnight, 10 billion yuan ($ 1.43 billion) of purchases were made on Alibaba platforms. By the time of 47 minutes, that number had increased tenfold.
Singles Day began as a parody activity celebrated by unattached Chinese students in the 1990s. In Chinese, this is called "Double 11", after the month and date figures. This improvised party has since been co-opted by online retailers and turned into a Chinese version of Cyber Monday – the busiest period for online shopping in the United States.
The Weibo platform, similar to Twitter, was covered with publications related to Singles Day Sunday, users proudly proclaiming that they had resisted the temptation of this year's purchases to those who enthusiastically listed a range of products. Worldly purchases.
The founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma, who will step down as president in less than a year, attended the start of the gala in Shanghai and appeared in a video message in which he wrapped hair crabs live, a popular online purchase.
Singles Day "is not a day off, but rather a day of gratitude," said Ma in the video. "It's when retailers use the best products and the best prices to express their gratitude to our consumers."
Chinese e-commerce platforms have already been criticized for selling low-quality and counterfeit goods. Hong Tao, an economics professor at the Beijing University of Technology and Commerce, said Singles Day encouraged buyers to focus on low prices for quality, allowing them to buy items they did not need.
"People are swept away by the festivities," Hong said in a phone interview. "This explosion of consumption, limited to one day, can be exhausting for buyers and sellers."
The opportunity also has great environmental implications.
While Alibaba and its competitor JD.com have pledged to use biodegradable packaging to reduce waste, a study conducted this month by Greenpeace East Asia found that many plastics labeled as "biodegradable" and used by retailers to Chinese line can only decompose under high temperatures. facilities limited in number in the country.
Greenpeace estimated that in 2020, "biodegradable" packaging could produce around 721 garbage trucks in China each day.
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