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The June 18 or "6.18" online shopping festival is likely to be the largest e-commerce promotional activity in China, as the country has largely put the coronavirus outbreak under control. 

Accumulated orders on JD.com, the country's second largest e-commerce platform after Alibaba, hit 239.2 billion yuan ($33 billion) by 2 pm (Beijing time) on Thursday, up from 179.5 billion yuan last year.

And, 10 minutes after the festival started, Jingdong Supermarket's overall turnover had increased 500 percent, and the turnovers of over 2,000 brands had increased 100 percent year-on-year.

Alibaba's Tmall.com, saw its trading volume in the first hour on Thursday increase 100 percent compared to last year, data released by Tmall said.

Starting at 12 am on Thursday, the festival saw more than 300,000 top-notch items discounted by up to 50 percent. 

The huge number of online deals shows that China's domestic consumption power has recovered now, Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based independent market analyst, told the Global Times on Thursday.

"Domestic consumption has shown more signs of recovery since April, driven by the resumption of production and the government's stimulus plans. Many platforms have issued considerable subsidies to stimulate consumers' confidence in online shopping," Liu said.

Established by JD years ago, the "6.18" mid-year festival is a big online shopping festival similar to Double 11 (11.11) or Singles' Day launched by Alibaba.

JD has announced it is offering at least 10 billion yuan in rebates and 100 billion yuan worth of discounts, making this year's event the biggest ever.

Alibaba's Tmall.com is offering an unprecedented 15 billion yuan in promotional vouchers. 

"Each [company] claims to offer its largest ever discount rate, with tens of billions in subsidies. In this way, the discounts are much greater than in previous years," Liu said. 

Mobile phones, digital and 3C products are leading in the festival's sale rankings.

Just 10 minutes after the festival was opened, Huawei took the lead with its turnover increasing by more than 300 percent year-on-year, while Apple broke the 100 million yuan sales mark in just five seconds on JD.com.

Mo Han, a Shanghai-based IT worker, told the Global Times that he had spent 7,248 yuan to buy a Huawei P40 Pro 5G smartphone during the gala. 

"It was hundreds of yuan cheaper. I just wanted to change my phone and happened to catch up with 6.18," Mo told the Global Times on Thursday.

Medicine and personal protection equipment are also highly sought by consumers. Sales of masks and disinfectant between June 12 and 14 increased 400 percent from the week before on Pinduoduo.com, according data released by the company. The increase was mainly attributed to sales in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region.

Li Hao, a Beijing-based consumer, told the Global at Times that he spend 300 yuan on Thursday to stock up on personal protection equipment due to the new outbreak of the coronavirus in the capital. 

"Masks are daily necessities for the near future," Li said.