High-volume goods during the Double 11 shopping festival in Hohhot, capital city of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Photo: IC

Chinese e-commerce platforms saw sales of various categories boom at the official launch of this year’s Double 11 shopping festival which began on Monday evening as the world's second-largest economy gears up for the annual buying spree.

At 8 pm Monday, the first slot of Tmall’s Double 11 sales officially kicked off, leading up to the final sale day on November 11. According to Alibaba's latest data, transaction value of 102 brands on the platform crossed the 100 million yuan ($13.75 million) mark within one hour of the opening of the event.

Traffic for livestreaming on Taobao increased by 600 percent in the first hour compared with the same time last year and the transaction volumes made by medium-level livestreamers were up by 250 percent year-on-year. 

The buoyant figures are fundamentally due to the steady growth of domestic consumer demand and through the Double 11 event, the digital economy can better serve the development of the real economy, Tmall said.

Another Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com also officially launched the annual spree at 8 pm on Monday with cell phones and home appliances proving hot items. 

The turnover of Apple, Xiaomi, Huawei, Honor mobile phones exceeded 100 million yuan in just one second while OPPO, Vivo and Samsung doubled mobiles phones sales year-on-year within 10 minutes.

The transaction value of home appliances exceeded one billion yuan within one minute and the figure increased by more than 40 percent year-on-year in 10 minutes, according to JD.com.

In the auto category, JD Auto's tire category sales increased by 300 percent year-on-year. The orders for oil maintenance sets were up by 200 percent and those from the new-energy vehicle category were up by 750 percent year-on-year.

Although both platforms have yet to announce their overall sales volume, analysts stressed that the sales data showed China’s strong consumption potential despite economic downward pressure.

“We can see from Monday night's sales data that Chinese consumers still have great enthusiasm for consumption, which underlined the resilience of the Chinese economy and sound fundamentals of the Chinese economy,” Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based independent tech analyst told the Global Times on Tuesday.

Macro data also underscored the steady consumption recovery.

Retail sales of consumer goods increased in October, with the total amount reaching 4.05 trillion yuan, up 4.9 percent year-on-year and stood 0.5 percentage points higher than the previous month, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

The rapid development of online shopping led to the expansion of consumption scale. In the first 10 months of this year, online retail sales rose 14.6 percent year-on-year, accounting for 23.7 percent of total retail sales, according to NBS data.