Online shoppers in China have shattered last year’s record of $US24 billion ($33.25 billion) in sales on the country’s annual buying frenzy Sunday, as the tradition marked its 10th year.

The spending binge has for years eclipsed Cyber Monday in the US for online purchases made on a single day. This year’s tally breaks from gloomy forecasts about the world’s second-largest economy, which is struggling with a tariff war with the US, a stock market slump and slowing overall growth.

Known as Singles Day, the clamour for deals and discounts was heralded with characteristic fanfare by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has turned an unofficial holiday for people without romantic partners into a yearly windfall for digital retailers.

A massive screen at Alibaba’s gala in Shanghai showed the surging sales numbers in real time — at two minutes and five seconds after midnight Saturday, 10 billion yuan ($2 billion) in purchases had already been made on Alibaba’s platforms.

By the one hour and 47 minute mark, that number had increased tenfold. Just before 4pm Sunday, the sales reached 168.2 billion yuan ($33.45 billion) — surpassing the total purchases from last year’s Singles Day, according to figures posted online by Alibaba Group.

The final tally for the day came in at 213.5 billion yuan ($42.46 billion).

Singles Day began as a spoof event celebrated by unattached Chinese university students in the 1990s. In Chinese, it’s called “Double 11”, after the numbers in the month and date. The improvised holiday was co-opted by e-retailers in 2009 and transformed into China’s version of Cyber Monday, as the Monday after Thanksgiving is known.

Nearly $9.14 billion in sales were made on Cyber Monday in 2017, up about 17 per cent from the previous year, according to Adobe Analytics. Ren Xiaotong, a 27-year-old accountant in Beijing, said she suspected online stores jacked up their prices in the lead-up to Singles Day so they could declare that items were discounted.

But in the end, her scepticism didn’t stop her from partaking. “Singles Day is different now — it has more tricks than before,” Ren said. “You only save a few dozens of yuan at the end. That being said, I still bought a pair of shoes, simply to celebrate the festival.”

The Twitter-like Weibo platform was blanketed with Singles Day-related posts on Sunday, from users proudly proclaiming that they had resisted the shopping urge this year to those who cheerfully listed an array of mundane purchases.

Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who will step down as chairman in less than a year, attended the start of the gala in Shanghai and appeared in a video message in which he wrapped up live hair crabs, a popular online purchase.

Singles Day “is not a day of discounts, but rather a day of gratitude,” Ma said in the video. “It’s when retailers use the best products and best prices to show their gratitude to our consumers.”

Chinese e-commerce platforms have come under fire in the past for peddling low-quality and counterfeit items. Hong Tao, an economics professor at Beijing Technology and Business University, said Singles Day encourages shoppers to prioritise cheap prices over high quality, causing them to purchase items they don’t need.

“People are swept up in the festivities,” Hong said in a phone interview. “This burst of consumption, confined to just one day, can be exhausting for both buyers and sellers.”

The occasion also has big environmental implications.

While both Alibaba and competitor JD.com have pledged to use biodegradable packaging to cut down on waste, research conducted this month by Greenpeace East Asia said many plastics marked “biodegradable” and used by Chinese e-retailers can break down only under high temperatures in facilities that are limited in number across the country.

Greenpeace estimated that by 2020, “biodegradable” packaging could produce roughly 721 truckloads of trash in China every day.

‘ABABIS’ AND ‘STAR WNRS’: KNOCK-OFFS THRIVE

— AFP

Sneakers on a popular Chinese e-commerce platform look like Adidas, but are branded “Ababis”. Underwear resembling Calvin Klein are called “Caiwen Kani”. Toys with an uncanny resemblance to a certain blockbuster movie franchise opt for “Star Wnrs”.

As China held its massive annual “Singles Day” online sales event on Sunday, shoppers could still find cheap imitations on Alibaba’s Taobao app despite the company’s efforts to curb sales of counterfeit goods.

US and European companies have long complained about the theft of intellectual property in China, a central issue in the US-China trade war.

President Xi Jinping renewed a pledge this week to protect IP rights, and a law is set to take effect on January 1 to punish e-commerce companies if fake goods are sold on their platforms.

But few moments of the year highlight the policing mountain authorities face quite like Singles Day.

AFP was able to find a veritable treasure trove of knock-offs on Taobao ahead of the November 11, or “Double 11”, shopping spree. During last year’s event, consumers spent a record $33.25 billion through Alibaba’s platforms.

According to the company, $13.86 billion had been generated in the first hour of this year’s sales. By 11am, sales had hit $28.4 billion.

Almost every Chinese smartphone has a version of the Taobao app, making it one of the world’s largest online trading platforms with 634 million active monthly users.

While the majority of products sold are genuine, imitations abound. A pair of “Ababis” trainers — with four instead of Adidas’ inimitable three stripes — retails at the mouth-watering price of only 39 yuan ($7.80).

“Balenciaca” sneakers with an uncanny resemblance to the Balenciagas worn by the likes of Kim Kardashian cost just $25. Fake Louis Vuitton handbags retail at just $23.50, well below the price of the authentic product.

In the streets of Beijing, some people struggled to figure out if the products shown to them by AFP journalists were the real thing.

“I can’t really tell the difference,” said Li, a 26-year-old man staring at a pair of “Caiwen Kani” underwear. “It looks authentic. It is original.”

A small TIE Fighter from the Star Wars Lego franchise costs $2.80, if you are willing to overlook a slight flaw in the product’s “Lepin” and “Star Wnrs” packaging.

“I would buy it,” said Wang Yu, 37, looking at box. “I think all products are kind of copying each other. I can accept it as long as it suits children. But under the condition that it’s good quality.”

People buying booze can take a shot at alternative products. The alcohol section offers whiskey by “Jack David” while Bordeaux wines carry unusual names: “The Heart of Freedom”, “Bravespirit”, “Dragon Were General”.

In 2016 Taobao was put back on the US Trade Representative’s blacklist of “most notorious” markets for its sale of pirated and counterfeit goods and violations of intellectual property.

According to the EU’s Intellectual Property Office, counterfeiting costs 434,000 jobs in Europe and 60 billion euros ($94 billion) per year.

In a statement to AFP, Alibaba said it requires all merchants to respect IP rights and has stepped up efforts to take down listings of counterfeit products.

“Alibaba’s IP protection systems and technologies are among the best in the industry and we are always looking for ways to improve them,” the statement said.

Alibaba said it has made it easier for small businesses to protect their IP rights. It also supports law enforcement investigations and takes infringers to court, filing 48 lawsuits against counterfeiters in the past year.

The number of requests to take down listings saw an annual decline of 44 per cent between September 2017 and August 2018.

Delphine Sarfati-Sobreira, representative of the Union of Manufacturers in Paris, said one out of every two companies falls victim to knock-offs, costing them up to 10 per cent of their turnover.

Smaller companies “face difficulties that sometimes push them to give up or, even worse, go bust”, she said.

The law comes into force in January and aims to knock the knock-offs off the online retail platforms, but some companies remains sceptical.

“It’s pure hypocrisy,” said Hubert Ricard, an export consultant for French wine company “La Guyennoise”, complaining that some provincial authorities are “very often” part of “manufacturing and distribution of copies of wines”.