Shopping festival notches record numbers

This year's Nov 11 Singles Day shopping spree has become a growth engine for consumption and economic recovery in China, despite the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and uncertainties in both domestic and foreign markets.

Chinese e-commerce giant JD reported its accumulated sales from Nov 1 until 0:09 am Nov 11 reached a staggering 200 billion yuan ($30.3 billion) during this year's Nov 11 Singles Day shopping extravaganza, and continued to climb through the rest of the day.

More than 100,000 computers were sold in the first 10 minutes of trading on Wednesday, and major home appliance brands such as Haier, Midea and Gree witnessed their transaction volume surpass 100 million yuan within one minute. The newly launched Huawei Mate 40 products notched up more than 100 million yuan in sales in just 7 seconds.

The turnover of JD Worldwide, the company's cross-border commerce unit, surged by more than 120 percent on a yearly basis in the first 10 minutes, while sales in the luxury products category skyrocketed by 500 percent within the first 10 minutes, with more than 130 luxury brands seeing their transaction volume increase by 100 percent year-on-year.

In addition, sales generated from livestreaming sessions exceeded 100 million yuan in 6 seconds, and JD Super, JD's online supermarket, rose 10 times year-on-year in the first five minutes of sales.