Singles’ Day sales hit by rising anti-consumerism sentiment, China’s youth warn of ‘vicious circle’
- Sales during Singles’ Day, the world’s biggest online shopping event, grew to a record 540.3 billion yuan (US$84.4 billion) during the 11-day campaign
- But the first single digit growth figure since the event started in 2009 could partially have been caused by a growing tide of anti-consumerism sentiments in China
Anti-consumerism sentiment among young people in China concerned with overindulgence dominated the world’s largest online shopping festival this year, adding to the recent social phenomena of “lying flat” and “involution”.
A group called “Don’t Buy – Anti-consumerists” on Chinese social media platform Douban urged people to be mindful of their purchases and not blindly follow shopping trends.
Created just days before last year’s Singles’ Day, the group now has over 300,000 members, who collectively refer to themselves as “opposers of consumerism”.
When young people overspend and run out of money, they’ll borrow money and be dragged into a vicious circle, eventually their families will be trapped in it too
The group asserts that recent developments in e-commerce, including live-stream shopping and the daigou industry of cross-border exporting, are planting materialistic desires among consumers that have economic and psychological ramifications. On internet forums, this process is widely referred to as zhong cao, which literally means planting grass.