FX.co ★ Alibaba posts record sales on Singles’ Day shopping fest

According to Bloomberg, Alibaba’s Singles’ Day shopping festival that was held on November 11, 2021 hit a new sales record. The Chinese e-commerce giant saw impressive gains on Thursday, November 11, during its yearly shopping frenzy called Singles’ Day. Shoppers were generous this time and spent billions of yuan on gifts, Bloomberg reports. Thus, the Singles’ Day shopping event has brought the company 540.3 billion yuan ($85 billion). This is much higher than the official result of 498.2 billion yuan ($77.8 billion) posted last year. Notably, Alibaba’s sales on Singles’ Day have surpassed the main US shopping sprees – Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Last year, consumers spent $34.4 billion over the same period. At the same time, Securities Daily, the Chinese state-backed newspaper, criticizes Alibaba’s “worship of turnover.” The newspaper stresses that high turnover from sales is “unsustainable, chaotic and incompatible with China's new development path.” Earlier, the Chinese authorities accused Alibaba of treating its customers poorly. In particular, the main complaints were about spamming customers with promotions, restricting their choices, and allowing merchants to fake discounts, punishing them with heavy fines in some cases. However, the strong performance of the e-commerce titan encouraged the market. Surging sales eased concern among investors about the recent slump in Alibaba’s shares in September this year. A drop in the stock value was triggered by the clampdown from Chinese regulators who ordered Ant Group, Alibaba’s subsidiary company, to abandon its digital payments service Alipay and create a separate app for its lending business.