Outside In | Singles’ Day sales are no cause for optimism – when Chinese consumerism wakes, it may trash the world
- The good news is that China’s Singles’ Day numbers show it is boosting domestic demand, becoming less reliant on exports
- The bad news? If China, and India, replicate the West’s consumption and waste habits, we’ll have an environmental crisis
As Taylor Swift led a long list of international stars in a glittering show to celebrate Alibaba’s spending party, it was mesmerising to watch the “spendometer” whirr giddily at the bottom of the screen as they marked US$1 billion in sales in just 68 seconds, US$10 billion in half an hour, eventually topping 268 billion yuan, or US$38.4 billion, over the full 24 hours. That was 26 per cent up on 2018.
Here were half a billion people buying more than a billion items across the e-commerce network of Alibaba (also the parent company of the South China Morning Post), ranging from perfume and make-up to cars and farm equipment.
Add to this the US$29 billion or so spent across JD.com’s copycat extravaganza, and significant billions spent across the e-commerce platform of upstart Pinduoduo, and you have nothing less than a consumer orgy.
Compare this with the five-day Black Friday spend-fest in the US, which last year clocked just under US$25 billion in sales, and Cyber Monday that clocked less than US$8 billion, and you glimpse the awesome consumer power that can be driven by an emergent China that today still has per capita income not much more than a quarter of US per capita income.