Staff members sort packages at a logistics center in Taiyuan, north China's Shanxi Province, Nov. 11, 2022. China's annual "Double Eleven" festival, which falls on Nov. 11, was first started by Alibaba's e-commerce platform in 2009 and quickly grew into a major shopping event.(Photo: Xinhua)

 
Many brands have posted record sales on Saturday as China's Double 11 online shopping festival concluded with new trends and highlights amid a continued recovery in the country's consumption.

As Chinese e-commerce platforms place increased emphasis on quality development and integration with the real economy amid economic pressures, major platforms including Tmall and JD.com didn't release the gross merchandise volume (GMV) for 2022's Double 11 online festival like in past years.

The shopping festival has shown an increasingly important role of China's digital economy in the overall economy amid the impact of downward pressure on global economy and the COVID-19 resurgence, experts said.

On Saturday, Chinese brands including Xiaomi, TCL and Vivo have reported sales hitting new highs.

Lei Jun, founder and CEO of Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi, posted on his Sina Weibo account on Saturday that sales across all of the company's sales channels exceeded 17 billion yuan ($2.4 billion) during the shopping festival.

 Chinese electronics firm TCL announced that the brand's sales of all products in this Double 11 festival exceeded 3.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60 percent.

Although the market sentiment and expectation among consumers and businesses still remain cautious amid the epidemic, companies' sales growth during the Double 11 festival shows China's consumption continues to recover, Tian Yun, former vice director of the Beijing Economic Operation Association, told the Global Times on Saturday.

Amid the downward pressure on the global economy, Chinese enterprises are still innovating and stimulating new consumption hotspots, Tian said.

This year's Double 11 shopping festival is the most diverse event for participating merchants, with 290,000 brands, millions of small and medium-sized businesses, and livestreaming sellers signing up. More than 21 million products participated in the event, according to a Hangzhou Daily report. 

New online business models like livestreaming sales have attracted wide attention at the Double shopping festival. The average daily view of livestreaming selling events on Taobao increased by 561 percent year-on-year, according to the report.

As China's Double 11 online shopping festival enters its 14th year, China's digital economy not only plays a supportive role for the development of the real economy, but also develops many new forms of businesses, providing a new drive of growth for the Chinese economy, Tian said.  

Global Times