In China, despite Singles’ Day, the depression of small traders in the face of the slowdown in consumption and the price war

On the conveyor belt of a JD.com warehouse, China’s second largest e-commerce company. In Beijing, November 11, 2024. WANG ZHAO / AFP In a room on the upper floors of the somewhat decrepit Dayuan building, marked with the sign “e-commerce and livestream base”, in the north of Canton, in southern China, Huang Yuepei takes stock of his affairs. We might have expected frenzied activity during this Singles’ Day period, the big Chinese sales on November 11. But at his tea table, he analyzes the decline in online furniture sales: Chinese consumers have certainly not disappeared, the market is deep, but everything is moving more slowly than before. While listening to him, it’s impossible not to look at the imposing speaker behind him, equipped with an integrated video projector, two microphones and a tablet for choosing songs. “As we had nothing to do, we bought ourselves a karaoke machine to pass the time,” he laughs, also taking poker chips out of a drawer. The man notes that consumer demand is amorphous: “People are much more careful than before, that’s obvious. » This year, he therefore refused to participate in Singles’ Day, an event popularized in 2009 by the e-commerce giant Alibaba and which has become, over the years, the Chinese equivalent of Black Friday in the United States, or a more intense version of the January sales in France. It would be necessary to offer attractive discounts to attract consumers, but he judges that the margins have already eroded too much: he cannot keep up. Read also | Article reserved for our subscribers China in search of economic recovery Read later His neighbor from room number 509, Huang Yuanping, came to drop by. He makes the same observation. “Some people still have money, but they prefer to keep it. From [la crise liée au] Covid-19, consumers are more careful,” he said, taking a cigarette out of a red packet illustrated by the Forbidden City. Walking the corridors of this building where each office houses an online store is like taking the pulse of the world’s second largest economy. Across the street, Ms. Gu, who only gives her last name, sells women’s clothing on several platforms, including Taobao, Alibaba’s site for small merchants, and Pinduoduo, which in Europe is known as name Temu. She produces in small workshops in Canton. Her best seller is a jumpsuit for a little over a hundred yuan (around 13 euros), she explains behind her computer. While processing orders for November 11, she also noted that the economy was “slowing down”. You have 63.24% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.



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