For the past few days, Tan Zhaohui has seen a familiar sight every time she has returned to her home in the southwestern Chinese city of Chengdu: a mound of packages spilling out of the nearby delivery station.<\/p>\n
The huge piles of e-commerce parcels have almost become an annual tradition in China over the past few years \u2013 a sign that the popular \u201c618\u201d shopping festival is approaching once again.<\/p>\n
But this year, the piles are noticeably less towering than usual, a reflection of the subdued mood that has gripped China\u2019s consumers in recent months.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe delivery person told me that there weren\u2019t as many packages as before,\u201d the 58-year-old said. \u201cI guess people are getting more cautious as the economic environment is not as good as before.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201c618\u201d festival is so popular that it has come to be viewed as a barometer of sorts for China\u2019s retail sector, with analysts scrutinising the platforms\u2019 turnover figures and consumption trends.<\/p>\n
This year, the biggest takeaway seems to be a general lack of enthusiasm among consumers, despite weeks of non-stop promotional campaigns by the platforms and the government offering subsidies for a wide range of goods.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the past few days, Tan Zhaohui has seen a familiar sight every time she has returned to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":750663,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,3686,99,3293,512,4690,343037,164,28301,42976,360341,360342,55169,163871,21726,16341,360343,138292],"class_list":["post-750662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-beijing","tag-business","tag-chengdu","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-covid-lockdowns","tag-economy","tag-hangzhou","tag-jd-com","tag-li","tag-minxiao-chang","tag-national-bureau-of-statistics","tag-shanxi","tag-state-administration-for-market-regulation","tag-taiyuan","tag-tan-zhaohui","tag-zhuhai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=750662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/750662\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/750663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=750662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=750662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=750662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}