Subdued sales for Singles' Day, China's online shopping festival, signal weak appetite for spending

HONG KONG (AP) — Signs so far show Singles’ Day, China ’s biggest online shopping festival, is failing to entice worried consumers into splashing out more, even when they are offered bargains.

Singles’ Day, a landmark discount campaign similar to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales in the U.S., is focused on Nov. 11, or 11-11, which is Wednesday. But it starts weeks earlier and is seen as a barometer for the broader economy.

Retail data platform Syntun said as of Oct. 31, the cumulative sales for this year’s festival were just over 1 trillion yuan ($154 billion), broadly similar to last year’s figure for the same period.

Retailers have managed to increase sales mainly by making the festival longer: total Singles' Day sales in 2025 reached a record of almost 1.7 trillion yuan ($254 billion).

But consumer demand in China has been suppressed as confidence took a hit from a prolonged property sector downturn among other factors. “Optimism over a recovery in domestic demand has faded,” said Max Zenglein, Asia Pacific senior economist at The Conference Board, “Improvements in sentiment have repeatedly proved short-lived.”

E-commerce giants like Alibaba have turned to artificial intelligence to try to get frugal shoppers to spend more. Alibaba's platforms Taobao and Tmall, for example, were integrated with Alibaba's Qwen AI this year even before the campaign started to help with shoppers' orders and product recommendations.

For the first time, Singles' Day AI token plans are on offer and are being promoted prominently. This month, one livestream by Li Jiaqi, dubbed the “Lipstick King” after selling huge amounts of lipsticks, recorded sales roughly equivalent to 2 trillion tokens within half an hour, according to Chinese media.

While the broader economy is still growing at a relatively robust pace, expanding 4.6% in annual terms in January-September, much of that momentum came from a boom in exports. Retail sales of consumer goods rose just 1.1% from a year earlier during the same period.

China’s huge domestic market has suffered as a yearslong real estate downturn has left families feeling less well off. Home prices are down roughly 20% or more from the market's 2021 peak, with smaller cities and the secondary market suffering more.

While housing prices appear to be stabilizing in larger cities, many homeowners are not convinced they won’t fall further, said Andy Rothman, founder of the advisory firm Sinology.

In the southern furniture manufacturing hub of Foshan, Gabby Liang said she's feeling cautious.

“I’ve been buying much less online, especially when it comes to non-essential items,” the 24-year-old said. “During the Single’s Day festival last year, I bought quite a bit of skincare products. But this year I expect to buy fewer.”

Other shoppers said they are cutting down on big spendings. “I’m perhaps not as keen on pursuing famous or high-end brands as I used to be,” Kong Min, a resident in Beijing, said of this year’s Single’s Day.

Middle-class Chinese consumers have lost a lot of confidence, plus, many of the discounts offered during the festival are not as good as before, said Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group in Shanghai.

⁠More shoppers are experiencing a “discount fatigue,” said Yaling Jiang, founder of ApertureChina, a market research company. Discounts are being offered year-round, so the boost from Singles Day may be shrinking, she said.

“Looking at what Single’s Day originally was: a shopping festival where people used to expect the largest discounts of the year,” she said. “That is not true any more after it was extended to multiple platforms, then to a monthlong thing.”

Liang, who works in furniture sales, said extras like cameras and game consoles are off the list this year.

“We’re undergoing a consumption downgrade," she said. “Even the amount that we earn has somehow been downgraded.”

Business has stalled, Liang said, as Chinese shoppers tighten their belts, despite rising exports to regions such as the Middle East and Africa.

Sales inside China have suffered as an oversupply of many goods, from autos and TVs to shoes and electronics, has pumped up competition in overcrowded industries, prompting manufacturers to step up overseas expansions.

Exports soared 35% year-on-year in October, powered by high-tech items like semiconductors and electric vehicles, and China is on track to surpass last year’s record $1.2 trillion trade surplus.

But at home, demand for big ticket items like some luxury products and cars have been hit especially hard.

Passenger car sales inside China have fallen for most of this year, declining almost 25% in January-September, according to industry data. That's partly due to dialed-back government subsidies this year.

It's a stark contrast to the 71% jump in exports of passenger cars during the same period.

Purchases of luxury goods have also suffered. LVMH, which runs Louis Vuitton, Dior and Fendi, and Kering, whose brands include Gucci, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, both reported customer demand has dipped in China in recent months.

Chinese leaders have been pledging for years to spur faster growth in domestic demand. But strong export growth has dulled a sense of urgency over launching policies to help stimulate the domestic economy, analysts said.

“As long as China continues to make progress on its industrial and technological ambitions, policymakers have little incentive to fundamentally rebalance the economy toward household demand,” said Zenglein.

When it comes to retailing, not all categories are suffering. The latest consumer status symbols increasingly are related to health, lifestyle, and experiences.

“It’s not a simple case of big-ticket items falling,” said Jacob Cooke, CEO of Beijing-based consultancy WPIC Marketing + Technologies. Sales of health-related items are performing relatively well, he said.

According to WPIC data, for the 12 months ending in September, online sales of imported fish oil grew nearly 43% year-over-year. Other supplements targeting sleep, joint and bone strength grew between 28% and 37%.

Cooke expects some growth in this year Singles' Day sales.

ApertureChina’s Jiang views the defining trend in consumer culture this year as “just living life,” pulling people away from grand gestures and returning the focus to ”the bare necessities and internal fulfilment.”

While many families are holding back, with youth unemployment about 18% and income growth lagging, China's household savings still are huge. With its population of 1.4 billion it has enormous spending potential, though consumer preferences and spending patterns are changing.

China’s consumption story is not one of outright weakness, according to Zenglein, the economist at The Conference Board, but of growing divergence, with pockets of stronger demand despite subdued overall sentiment.

“It’s still enough to make a living, but there’s just not much extra to splurge,” said Liang from Foshan.