Members of staff work at a sorting center of Bpost, the Belgian postal service, in Brussels, Belgium, Nov. 26, 2020. Belgium is currently under strict lockdown measures against the COVID-19 pandemic, as all non-essential businesses are closed. As the Black Friday and Christmas season approaches, Bpost faces increasing amount of parcels due to the rising demand of e-commerce.Photo:Xinhua

While suppliers in many countries and regions have found it difficult to respond to the boom in US consumer spending for Black Friday and the upcoming Christmas holiday due to the ongoing pandemic, Chinese factories have been working overtime to rush production of orders that are unprecedented in magnitude.

Active buyers of Christmas ornaments and online transactions continued to rise in October, which has been the trend since July. For November 4-17 alone, online orders for Christmas ornaments were up 233 percent year-on-year, online transactions were up 247 percent, and the number of active buyers was up 61 percent, according to a report that Alibaba.com sent to the Global Times on Sunday. The top buyers were from the US, followed by the UK.

Due to the outbreak, this year's overseas Christmas shopping season has come earlier and with a longer lead time than usual. On Alibaba.com, active buyers of Christmas ornaments and online transactions have been on the rise since July, with transactions up 185.3 percent year-on-year in the past three months.

As the most important cultural festival in the West, Christmas spending is still booming despite the crisis. Artificial trees, ornaments, Santa Claus figures, ribbons, cards, pillows and other items, plus gifts, generated significant transaction outcomes.

Alibaba.com, which aims to prepare goods for the year-end peak seasons such as Black Friday and Christmas, witnessed a record high in the core indicators of the platform in September, with actual transaction volume up 133 percent year-on-year, the order quantity up by 128 percent, and buyers' payments up 83 percent, the data showed.

Orders for consumer electronics also continued to rise, with sports and entertainment products experiencing an explosion. In October, headphone online transactions rose 100.1 percent and chargers rose 60.9 percent among traders on Alibaba.com.

Behind the boom are busy traders and suppliers who have been rushing to catch up with orders placed months ahead.

"In the past, customers only started to place orders in September. This year, they started in July and August, and continued into November, and more orders are coming," said Xu Shuyue, the head of a Yiwu commodity store, adding that overseas buyers had to prepare in advance because of the global pandemic. Yiwu in East China's Zhejiang Province is the world's largest wholesale market of commodities.

Liu Yan, a manager with an arts and crafts company based in Zhejiang Province, told the Global Times on Sunday that the company has massive export orders for Christmas ribbons, ornaments and other decorations, from countries and regions including the US since June, and the orders are nearly filled.

"Our workers put in extra hours for months to get the orders done, and despite logistics disruptions and rising costs for materials and shipments, thankfully we got them done on time as contracts specified," said Liu.