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

Another round of promotions for the annual Double 11 shopping festival kicked off on Friday amid an ongoing shopping spree as China's e-commerce platforms had already launched sales events by the end of October. 

Analysts said on Friday that the shopping extravaganza, combined with the ongoing peak consumption season in the fourth quarter, will play a vital role in boosting sustainable domestic consumption and further contribute to the continuing economic recovery. 

"I already purchased some necessities when the festival started at the end of October, and I may place more orders for the nursery and the baby," a white-collar worker surnamed Yu, who is in the early stages of pregnancy, told the Global Times. 

In the first week of the Double 11 shopping festival starting from October 23, nearly 30 brands on JD.com achieved sales over 1 billion yuan ($137.17 million), and the turnover for nearly 15,000 brands increased by more than five times year-on-year, according to the company.

The merchandise value of 155 brands on e-commerce giant Tmall surpassed 100 million yuan within minutes after the festival started at 8 pm on October 31. More than 70,000 brands had achieved last year's sales value within one hour. There were 29 livestreaming rooms that broke the 100 million yuan mark right after the festival started,according to Tmall.

"Double 11," also known as Singles' Day, was previously a one-day online shopping festival that fell on November 11 annually in China, but the event has been extended to several weeks this year and every e-commerce platform now has its own promotions.

Zhang Yi, CEO of the iiMedia Research Institute, expected sales for this year's Double 11 shopping festival to achieve a high record for recent years, boosted by a relatively stable and strong consumption recovery momentum this year. 

Zhang added that domestic merchants and marketplaces have also been launching promotions with cheaper prices and higher discounts, aiming to actively vie for consumer traffic. 

The Double 11 shopping festival, along with other e-commerce promotion events at the end of the year combined with the upcoming New Year's Day holiday, will significantly boost consumption recovery in the fourth quarter with a noticeable outcome, Cong Yi, a professor at the Tianjin University of Finance and Economics, told the Global Times on Friday. 

The consumption has been a ballast stone in stabilizing the nation's economy, Cong said, adding that the targeted stimulus has had a noticeable effect. 

Consumption contributed to 83.2 percent of economic expansion in the first three quarters of the year, accounting for 4.4 percentage points of the GDP growth rate, data from the National Bureau of Statistics showed.

Chinese authorities have been ramping up continued efforts in 2023 to boost domestic consumption. 

The National Development and Reform Commission, China's top economic planner, unveiled 20 administrative measures to spur domestic spending, as authorities aim to expand domestic market demand and ramp up high-quality economic development at the end of July. 

The commission vowed to stabilize spending of big-ticket items, expand service consumption, boost consumption in rural areas, explore new types of expenditure, improve infrastructure and optimize the overall spending environment.