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":500933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5560,114,15505,1657,3388,230332,184,2938,85,46,13737,230330,230331,16643,107126,127551,111548,230333,65562],"class_list":["post-500932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-beijing","tag-business","tag-chengdu","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-covid-lockdowns","tag-economy","tag-hangzhou","tag-il","tag-israel","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\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}