China’s state-run Global Times posted a glum report on Wednesday about China’s big “Double 11 shopping festival,” which “arrived in a low-profile and conservative manner” without “glamorous galas or eye-popping promotions” this year.
This was partly due to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) crackdown on flamboyant billionaire Jack Ma and his Alibaba corporation, the driving force behind the Double 11 or “Single’s Day” shopping extravaganza.
Both names for the shopping holiday refer to its date, 11/11. In Chinese culture, the number “1” can be seen as resembling a stick – the fallen branch of a tree – so 11/11 became associated with single people, especially single young men. Single’s Day was touted as an opportunity for them to find romance by purchasing appealing gifts for young women. Those who sold the gifts unsurprisingly did much of the touting.
The basic idea for Singles Day was invented by Chinese college students in 1993. The date was chosen for a sales bonanza more or less at random by one of Alibaba’s e-commerce sites in 2009.
Promoted heavily by Alibaba, Double 11 grew into the biggest shopping day in the world, eventually outstripping even Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States.
Its origins might sound melancholy, but Singles Day is marketed to young people as an optimistic, upbeat holiday. It is also seen as an opportune time to shop for different clothes as fall heads into winter.
“Rather than seeing it as a way of celebrating single-hood, they see it as an end date – ‘This is the last day I’m going to be single,’” TV personality Yue Xu explained in 2015.
The CCP cracked down heavily on high-flying tech entrepreneurs over the past year, especially Alibaba godfather Jack Ma, who was made to disappear for a while after daring to publicly criticize the Communist Party in October 2020 and was considerably less exuberant when he resurfaced.
The Global Times found Singles Day 2021 comparably less over-the-top “amid Chinese regulators’ stepped-up supervision of Internet platforms,” especially Ma’s humbled and hobbled corporation:
Alibaba, one of the first Chinese e-commerce platforms that started the shopping festival a decade ago, held a very low-profile evening party without a live studio audience to celebrate the event – a sharp contrast to previous years when global celebrities, including Taylor Swift, were invited to perform at live events.
The e-commerce giant, which was fined by Chinese regulators a record $2.75 billion for anti-monopoly violations in April, appears to seek a low profile.
Several insiders confirmed to the Global Times that Alibaba wouldn’t invite media and industry insiders to a press conference at its headquarters in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province this year. Alibaba said that it will not have a live studio audience due to new COVID-19 outbreaks, and this year’s event will be broadcast live.
“The priority of this year’s shopping bonanza is to pursue high-quality growth and how they improve consumers’ sense of gain and shopping experience. This is a departure from the previous flamboyant approach and a genuine return to the substance of business,” explained tech analyst Liu Dingding.
The Global Times quoted analysts who expected brisk sales during the more restrained Singles Day event, thanks to “China’s steady economic recovery from the pandemic and the expanding consumption power of Chinese residents” – but also predicted retailers would be less eager to brag about big sales than in past years due to “a variety of concerns” that were not elaborated upon.
Alibaba, which last year extended Single’s Day into an 11-day event that ends on November 11, reported $84.5 billion in orders on Thursday, a 14 percent increase over 2020.
Reuters noted the increase was considered surprisingly robust given “slowing retail sales, supply shortages, power disruptions and [Chinese coronavirus] lockdowns.”
With a nervous eye on communist regulators, Alibaba “played down its sales figures and touted its social welfare initiatives in the final hours of its Singles’ Day festival on Thursday, marking a shift in tone for the highly-publicized event.”
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