A staff of a delivery center check parcels as the Double 11 shopping festival comes. Photo: VCG

From highly popular leggings to water bottles, China's Double 11 festival, the country's most important online shopping spree, saw increased participation this year of consumers from Europe, North Africa and Latin America, indicating that the festival has become a global shopping event and its overseas spillover effect continues to be unleashed.

Experts noted the Double 11 festival has increasingly become a bridge between Chinese e-commerce and overseas consumers, and between Chinese consumers and overseas businesses. With the rapid development of international logistics, more cost-effective China-made products will go global and gain recognition overseas.

The provincial postal administration of East China's Zhejiang Province said on Friday that during this year's shopping spree, the number of orders from overseas consumers had grown significantly compared to previous years, especially for hand warmers, heaters and electric blankets.


"We are producing a batch of leggings for European customers, and we have also received orders from Japan," Lu Huazhen, a representative from Zhuji Aishanglin Knitting Co, a legging manufacturer at Zhuji in Zhejiang, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Rising orders from overseas for China-made heating products represent just one facet of the Chinese shopping festival going global. After 14 years of development, Double 11 has been embraced by many overseas consumers now.

Every year in November, two e-commerce platforms based in Singapore, Lazada and Shopee, launch the Double 11 shopping festival in Southeast Asia, with a number of shopping centers and merchants using the event as an opportunity to launch promotions.

Lazada plans to hold a five-day shopping festival in Southeast Asia during this year's Double 11, in which consumers in Thailand can try on cosmetics in Siam Square in Bangkok and have the opportunity to interact with their favorite performers.

The Middle East and North Africa, which have a high level of acceptance of e-commerce, also saw increasing interest from local consumers for Double 11. According to the Xinhua News Agency, 70 percent of consumers in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates said that they would buy products during the online festival, compared with 65 percent during the year-end peak sale season.

"The just-ended shopping festival on Chinese e-commerce platforms has gone global, gradually showing its spillover effects on overseas consumers," Zhang Yi, CEO of iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times on Sunday.

Zhang noted that China-made products have wide recognition and a high esteem overseas for their cost-effectiveness. In addition, improvements in international logistics such as cheaper fees and more overseas warehouses have provided convenience for international consumers, helping the country's e-commerce to go global. 

Alibaba's domestic logistics service provider Cainiao told the Global Times on Sunday that in Karachi, Pakistan, the company built an automated express distribution center in cooperation with a local e-commerce company in mid-October. 

Previously, Pakistan could only sort express parcels manually. A Pakistani employee at the center expressed his confidence about this year's Double 11, saying that with the technical assistance of Chinese partners, the center will be able to provide high-quality services for customers.

In addition to bringing quality goods overseas, the festival is also an important time for international brands to expand in China. 

According to a report sent to the Global Times by Tmall, Alibaba's e-commerce platform, during this year's Double 11, consumers could buy more than 39,000 products from overseas brands from over 90 countries and regions at the platform. Among them, more than 1,600 new overseas brands participated in the shopping spree for the first time, bringing thousands of world premieres and limited edition new products.

Experts noted that the Double 11 shopping festival has injected strong momentum to domestic and global consumption confidence.

According to a report sent to the Global Times by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, cross-border e-commerce has made an important contribution to stabilizing the country's foreign trade. Data showed that in the first half of this year, import and export transactions of cross-border e-commerce increased by 28.6 percent year-on-year.

Zhang added that as the Double 11 event goes global, merchants can focus more on overseas markets and bring more high-quality Chinese products to the world.