Why China’s ‘Weary’ Consumers Still Outshopped the West

Interesting to track Black Friday coverage out of the US. Retail sales were up 4.1%, with online sales growing 9.1% to US$11.8 billion, a record high.

Western headlines pointed to “US consumer resilience”, a “celebratory mood despite economic strain”, and an “AI-driven online spending surge”.

Indeed, it’s a strong performance, especially given some mixed macro signals.

How about China’s Singles’ Day—the largest shopping festival in the world, for those who don’t know—which wrapped up a few weeks ago?

Singles’ Day 2025 also set a record high in sales this year—roughly US$240 billion, growing at ~15%. Pretty impressive, you might think. Yet many Western headlines pronounced that Singles’ Day “lost its shine” this year, in line with a broader consumption “slump”.

Many of the headlines also pointed to the extended shopping window this year, allegedly designed to appeal to “weary” consumers. Indeed, the festival was extended to around five weeks from four on most platforms.

For what it’s worth: not only did Singles’ Day 2025 set a record at nearly a quarter trillion USD, but overall retail sales are up 4.5% across the first three quarters.

With the extended shopping window, that means we were seeing about US$6-7 billion in online sales per day. The record-high Black Friday we just witnessed? $11.8 billion. So basically China’s online retail market experienced a Black Friday every other day for five consecutive weeks.

What explains the contrast in coverage? Singles’ Day used to be only a single day bonanza on November 11th—so it had more hype. The platform companies held galas with celebrity appearances (like a Taylor Swift performance for Tmall in 2019) to announce their overall sales figure before an anti-monopoly push halted that tradition. With the longer sales window, it blends into the rest of the year for consumers (for merchants, by the way, this is a hugely positive development). And like in the US, there are mixed macro signals in China as well. But less hype does not mean Singles’ Day has shrunk.

I should note the headline writers aren’t the same as the folks on the ground doing excellent reporting and telling nuanced stories about China’s complicated economic landscape—but headlines shape the narrative, and it’s a notable contrast.

But as we continue to argue at WPIC Marketing + Technologies—based on our market data and the hundreds of online stores we operate in the market—China’s consumer market is expanding and many categories are seeing premiumization.