Beijing (AFP)

The "Singles Day", the world's largest e-commerce event, generated a shopping spree in China, bodes well for the recovery of the world's second-largest economy.

As every year, November 11 gives rise in China to a rush of consumers on their smartphones and computers to order millions of products offered at unbeatable prices, from furniture to computers to clothing. and food.

The date and its sequence of "one" (11.11) is considered suitable for consumption by singles.

China Post handled no less than 675 million packages on Wednesday alone, a figure up 26% from last year, the China news agency reported on Thursday.

In terms of turnover, however, comparisons are difficult to establish compared to last year, the two largest e-commerce groups having decided to advance the sales to November 1.

The 24 hours thus turned into 10 days.

The juggernaut Alibaba, at the origin of the event in 2009, announced that it had sold on its various platforms for 498.2 billion yuan (63.8 billion EUR) of goods since November 1, a figure up 26% over the same period last year.

Its competitor JD.com announced sales of 271.5 billion yuan (34.8 billion EUR).

Other consumers have chosen other e-commerce sites, such as Pinduoduo, which does not provide figures, while traditional commerce also multiplies the discounts on November 11.

- The internet in the viewfinder -

Many economists hoped to read in these turnover figures a confirmation of the recovery of the Chinese economy after the shutdown suffered at the beginning of the year due to the appearance of the new coronavirus in the country.

They should be reassured.

“We have benefited from the robust recovery in consumption in China,” said Jiang Fan, chairman of Alibaba's two major sales platforms, Tmall and Taobao, in a statement.

Witness: Liu Yu, a worker from Beijing who took advantage of the biggest discounts falling from the first seconds of the day on Wednesday.

"I stayed up until midnight to be able to control the robot vacuum cleaner that I had been eyeing for weeks," he told AFP.

“Originally, it cost over 4,000 yuan, but I finally got it for just over 2,000,” he says.

The good performance of sales should put a little balm in the heart of the internet giants, now in the crosshairs of the authorities.

Their securities plunged on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Wednesday, the day after the announcement of new regulations against anti-competitive practices in the internet sector.

The National Administration for Market Regulation has particularly attacked exclusivity clauses that distort competition on e-commerce platforms.

Some groups, for example, force their suppliers to sell only on their sites.

Taobao, Alibaba's essential sales platform, also requires consumers to pay for their purchases through its Alipay payment system, to the exclusion of other devices like WeChat Pay, from the big competitor Tencent.

After slipping nearly 10% on Wednesday, Alibaba recovered a small 1.85% Thursday in Hong Kong, while JD.com regained 7.67% after plunging more than 9% the day before.

Alibaba seems all the more in the sights of the communist regime as the latter banned last week in extremis the listing, in Hong Kong and Shanghai, of its entity specializing in online payments, Ant Group, which manages Alipay .

The transaction was to be the biggest IPO ever, with a total of more than $ 34 billion raised.

Ant seems to have aroused the concern of financial regulators with its online lending platforms that break the rules imposed on public banks.

The authorities' veto followed a few days after remarks by Jack Ma, the eccentric founder of Alibaba, who had publicly questioned the role of regulators.

© 2020 AFP