The Quietest Double 11 in History! Statistical Methods Changed Every Year, Daily GMV Actually Fell by 8%! 70% Return Rate, 30% of Merchants Operating at a Loss, Car Sales Down 22%, Household Loans Net Decreased by 1 Trillion! The 1.1% Rise in Retail Sales is Just an Average of Basic Necessities! Middle-Class Discretionary Spending Actually Drops by 4-5% Annually!

This episode provides a detailed analysis of the real consumption data behind the quietest Singles' Day (11.11) in Chinese history. It points out that e-commerce platforms change their statistical methods every year to mask shrinking sales, with the actual daily average GMV falling by about 8%, return rates reaching as high as 70%, and 30% of merchants operating at a loss. At the same time, combined with the sharp decline in passenger vehicle sales, the net reduction in household loans, and the significant drop in discretionary spending on items like jewelry and home appliances, it reveals that private consumption in China is sliding into a cash-flow defense battle characterized by trading price for volume, shifting toward extreme cost-effectiveness, and cutting non-survival expenses.

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Has anyone noticed a change? That is, around this time in previous years, Taobao's Double Eleven ads should have been everywhere, right? As a result, before those ads could even spread out, Tmall's Double Eleven started selling. It started selling on October 20th, fucking October 20th. I think this whole thing is completely bullshit, and why is it bullshit? Originally, it was Singles' Day, which is the four ones, but they put it on October 20th to sell, and everything starts selling on even-numbered days, so what are singles supposed to be doing? You tell me, aren't ten and twenty both even numbers? Then, four hours after the sale started, Tmall issued a battle report, saying that 124 brands had a turnover exceeding 100 million. Now, here comes the funny part: on the exact same night last year, the battle report issued by Tmall said that 80 brands exceeded 100 million in the first hour of sales, so everyone can think about this. Last year it took one hour, and this year it took four hours. If the volume expansion after the start of sales was normal, the number of brands exceeding 100 million in four hours should have been several times that of one hour, right? As a result, it only increased by 55%. By now, this Double Eleven hasn't even concluded yet. Today, taking advantage of Double Eleven, we are going to talk about what kind of slope the real consumption of the Chinese public is actually going down. Let's first clarify the origin of this platform called Tmall. The total GMV of Double Eleven was last announced by Tmall in 2021, and the turnover that year had already dropped to a level of 8.45% growth. By the year 2022, hey, that vibe was really right. Why do I say 2022? Because this was the first Double Eleven where not a single platform announced its total GMV. Tmall's explanation was what? Very vague, saying that it was flat compared to last year's transaction volume. Then why didn't they announce it? Hey, isn't it because that scale couldn't grow anymore? Since then, the platforms have changed their statistical caliber, uniformly changing to what? Changing to reporting the number of brands exceeding 100 million. In 2024, Tmall reported a total of 7,889 brands exceeding 100 million for the whole week, but last year Tmall's caliber, hey, changed again, becoming 80 brands exceeding 100 million in the first hour, and even the closing battle report and media open day were cancelled. This year it changed again to 124 categories exceeding 100 million in the first four hours. You say this caliber fucking changed three times in three years. What did JD.com report last year? It was that the number of ordering users increased by 40%, and the number of orders increased by 60%. Anyway, how they could win is how they reported it. By this year, there is only one sentence left: double-digit growth. Douyin's caliber is even more ridiculous, directly changing that battle report into what? Changing it to the number of merchants exceeding 1 million increased by 74% year-on-year. Everyone saw it, right? It's all this kind of reporting on the growth rate of the number of merchants, and there isn't even a single GMV data point. To put it bluntly, what is it? It's that this statistical window fucking changes every year, the indicators fucking change every year, and what they change into are only those kinds that will only go up. Then if we look at third-party data, we will understand. Star Chart Data has a whole-network GMV data. How much was it in 2019? It was 410.1 billion. In 2021, it was 965.1 billion. In 2022, it was 1,115.4 billion, and in 2023 it was 1,138.6 billion. That is to say, by 2023, the growth rate only dropped to about 2% compared to the year-on-year growth rate of 2022. The comprehensive e-commerce sector was simply a negative number. Then in 2024, it suddenly jumped to how much? 1,441.8 billion, hey, the growth rate suddenly jumped to 20.6%. Last year it went to 1,695 billion, and the growth rate was 14.2%. When you look at this data, holy shit, it increased so much, what's going on? Did it accelerate again? Hey, Star Chart wrote a sentence in its report last year that was very intriguing, called the year-on-year caliber is affected by the adjustment of the major promotion cycle, and the comparability is limited. What does that mean? Hey, because this time window and this caliber have also changed. In 2024, the window for Star Chart to monitor Tmall, JD.com, and Pinduoduo was 29 days, while last year's window started from October 7th, totaling 36 days. Then let's do a mental calculation, ah, dividing that 1,441.8 billion in 2024 by those 29 days, then each day is probably about 49.7 billion in consumption. Last year it was 1,695 billion divided by 36 days, and each day is probably about 47 billion. Everyone saw it, right? The overall daily average GMV, it fell, falling by about 8%. Therefore, how did the so-called growth come about? It's the same routine as mooncakes, and the extra 7 days can explain it away. And did everyone see it? This is why the battle line is being drawn longer and longer. Tmall's pre-sales were advanced from October 24, 2023, to October 14, 2024. JD.com dragged it to 37 days last year, and Douyin's was even more exaggerated last year, starting to warm up from the Mid-Autumn Festival on September 16, claiming a total of 57 days.

Isn't the reason it was extended simply because a single day couldn't generate a sales surge anymore? They had to spread it out to sell, but something interesting happened today. JD.com's cycle shrank from 37 days to 33 days, Douyin shrank from 35 days to 28 days, and they've even stopped doing pre-sales. Tmall also pulled it back to around 30 days. In other words, the top platforms are already pulling their battle lines back themselves. This is the first time this has happened. Why are the top platforms pulling back their lines? Because extending it doesn't work anymore. Last year it was already pushed to the limit, and the daily average still dropped anyway, so what's the point of extending it further?

Speaking of this, someone is bound to ask, hey, has the advertising market collapsed too? Well, I have to be fair here: the total volume hasn't collapsed. According to statistics from the monitoring agency CTR, total advertising expenditure on the books grew by 1.6% in 2024, 5.4% last year, and 7% in the first seven months of this year, which is the highest figure for the same period in five years. So where did the money go? Quest Mobile wrote very clearly in its report for the first half of this year: what are the shrinking industries? It's online shopping and e-commerce companies that are slashing their advertising budgets, and what did they spend the money on instead? They used it to subsidize live-streaming rooms. Focus Media's financial report confirms this. Focus Media's revenue last year was 12.76 billion, up 4.05%, and the entire increase came from internet clients. Focus Media's internet-side revenue was 3.21 billion, an increase of 188.6%. Why did it increase so much? Because starting in June last year, Alibaba and Meituan were fighting a subsidy war for local services. Then the elevator ads were full of food delivery stuff. And in that same year, Focus Media's advertising revenue from daily consumer goods was left with only 6.035 billion, a drop of 16.2%. By the first three quarters of this year, Focus Media's revenue was 9.09 billion, still down 4.39%. In the third quarter alone, it fell by 8.62%. How does Focus Media explain this? They said that last year's instant retail marketing competition created a high base, so they fell this year. Hey, I don't care about their explanation, but looking at this advertising structure, we can easily spot a problem: the big spenders on brand hard advertising have stopped buying ads, and the money from the subsidy war was spent after a year. Now, the entire elevator space is quiet; you can't hear any ads. The multinational advertising audit agency App Quality's forecast for the top 500 brands in China is that media investment will have zero growth this year, and it may continue to shrink next year. What's even more telling is the platforms' approach to attracting merchants. In 2024, that approach was called "burden reduction." What does this mean? It means as long as you are willing to spend on traffic, the platform will return a portion of the tens of billions in cash vouchers to you. This is actually a disguised discount on traffic. This year, it simply turned into what Han Laobao called "bottom-line protection." In March this year, JD.com even launched something called the "Steady Profit Plan." This fucking name sounds just like a pyramid scheme. What does it mean? It means if a merchant spends money to buy traffic but doesn't reach the agreed target, hey, no matter how much you fall short of that target, the platform will compensate you in full. This is equivalent to gambling on sales with the platform. Then, the platform commission for new stores for the first year is also fully refunded. But it's particularly cunning, let me tell you. They don't refund money; hey, they don't refund cash, but give you vouchers. What can these vouchers be used for? They force you to continue buying JD.com ads. In other words, what they refund you are traffic-buying vouchers, not real money. It's not just JD.com; Alibaba is also doing large-scale traffic-buying rebates. Douyin has even passed 15% of the Double 11 cost reduction onto the merchants themselves to bear. Seeing that merchants can't even afford real people anymore, JD.com even gives away an AI digital human, which originally cost 30,000 a year, to new stores for free, because the cost is only one-tenth of a real person. What does this show? It shows that merchants are unwilling to buy traffic at the original price, right? The platform has no choice but to take the risk of placement onto its own books. JD.com turned commissions into advertising credits, which is equivalent to what? Using commission waivers to force you to buy traffic. And the situation for the super live-streamers who sell goods is even worse. In 2022, more than a quarter of all goods sold online were moved by these big streamers; last year, it dropped to 10%, and in the first quarter of this year, they couldn't even hold onto that 10% share, leaving only 9%. Everyone remembers "Tank Boy" Li Jiaqi, right? On the first day of pre-sales for Double 11 in 2022, it reached 21.5 billion; hey, that was the peak moment. In 2023, it dropped to 9.5 billion, and last year they simply didn't announce the amount. The giant behind celebrity live-streaming, Yangwang Technology, saw its revenue drop by 30.66% last year, losing 649 million, and has already achieved five consecutive years of losses.

As for the advertising side, we've finished looking at that; now let's look at the merchants' ledgers, which is where the real, unhideable truth lies. In this year's interim reports, among the 39 listed companies on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange that sell clothing, shoes, and bags, 24 disclosed their return rates across various platforms for the first time. The brand Busen had a return rate of 70.36% on Douyin; Septwolves reached 59%; Semir was at 50%; and GXG hit 49.9%. There is another figure that is official—or semi-official. According to the China National Textile and Apparel Council, the overall online return rate for women's clothing is between 50% and 60%, and the comprehensive cost of each return is approximately 16 yuan. Goldman Sachs has calculated that after excluding returns, the true GMV of Chinese e-commerce is only about 65% of the reported figures. The CCP's State Post Bureau is also particularly cunning; they only reported 13.9 billion express parcels during last year's Double 11 peak season, but they never report what percentage of those are returns. I judge that this gap was left intentionally. Let's look at profits again. Paiwang surveyed thousands of merchants, and last year, over 30% of them were in a state of loss. Furthermore, over 30% of merchants had net profit margins between 0% and 5%. According to sellers, traffic acquisition costs have reached 20% to 30% of total costs, and aggressive stores have even pushed traffic costs to the 50% level. Some brands' traffic costs during major promotions were even higher than their fucking sales revenue. So why is the return rate so high? Isn't it forced by the rules? During the 2024 Double 11, how did Tmall play it? It was called "300 off for every 300 spent across stores," with no cap. Consequently, this turned "order bundling for discounts" into an entire industry chain. The strategy was to pay the final balance, then collectively return the items used to meet the discount threshold, and the merchants had to bear the shipping insurance and secondary warehousing costs. Last year, Tmall behaved and changed it to an official 15% discount. This year, all three platforms scrapped the "spend-and-save" and bundling mechanisms, unifying them into single-item discounts. But do you think this is a concession? Tmall's rules state it's an "official discount," and the amount deducted is borne by the merchants. That 15% on Douyin is also something merchants concede themselves in their pricing. Then, Taobao, Tmall, JD.com, and Kuaishou also canceled their previous commission-free policies. To put it bluntly, changing to this single-item discount is to suppress the return rate; it is not for the sake of concessions. Moreover, even if it were a concession, it's still the merchants' money, so the merchants' costs haven't decreased by a single cent. I saw a quote from a women's clothing merchant in Hangzhou that was very accurate. What did they say? They said that in the past, the question was "how much can we sell?" This year, the first question is: "how much sales volume will actually remain?" Even Nike has completely cleared out thousands of its online distributors in China. Over 70% of brands have made net profit margin their top KPI, whereas this proportion was less than 40% before. In other words, the entire merchant community is also undergoing a defensive contraction.

Listed companies' reports show the same trend. Wangfujing lost 39.87 million last year, the first loss since its listing. You have to realize that Wangfujing has been listed since 1994, yet in the first three quarters of this year, it lost another 26.04 million. Yonghui claimed to have turned a profit in the first three quarters of this year, with a net profit of 170 million, but after stripping out subsidies, their core business only earned less than 6 million this year, and they lost another 82.69 million in the third quarter alone. The China Commerce Association for General Merchandise surveyed nearly 100 companies; 60.5% saw a decline in sales last year, and 65.3% saw a decline in net profit. Furthermore, 93.8% of retail enterprises listed insufficient consumer power as their biggest challenge. Jewelry is the industry where the drop in volume is most intuitive. For example, Chow Tai Fook's sales in mainland China appeared to rise by 6.9%, but in reality, what was it relying on? It was propped up by the skyrocketing gold price; actual sales volume fell by 17.8%. What does this mean? It means the higher the gold price goes, the less the common people can afford to buy. In just two and a half years, Chow Tai Fook closed 2,596 stores. Lao Feng Xiang was even worse; its third-quarter revenue was cut in half by 54%, and it suffered a loss of 124 million in a single quarter.

Looking at home appliances that relied on government subsidies to survive, they have completely stalled this year as well. Omnichannel retail plummeted by 9.9 percent in the first half of the year, and even Gree's net profit in the third quarter crashed by 43 percent. This confirms the candid statement by All View Cloud. What did All View Cloud say? Government subsidies in 2024 were a catalyst, but by last year they became an addiction. By this year, the market has developed complete drug resistance and immunity, meaning that issuing subsidies can no longer stimulate anything. Even a leading beauty brand like Proya saw that for every 100 yuan sold in the third quarter, 53.4 yuan went to platform fees. Can anyone guess the net profit? Coupled with the fact that Proya is a leading brand, its net profit was only 3.9 yuan. This is essentially working purely for the platforms as coolies. So what can factories do? Turn to exports. The General Administration of Customs of the CCP claimed that exports reached 23.2 trillion yuan in the first three quarters of this year, a surge of 16.4 percent. In the third quarter, it surged by another 22 percent. A research team at Cornell University put it very bluntly: with China's domestic demand being so weak, the only choice left for Chinese factories is to export.

What are consumers doing on the other end? Two things: depanding and destocking. Everyone knows the website 1688, right? Well, this is a wholesale website. The number of annual active buyers on this website broke 100 million in February last year. There is also a similar website called Mingming Henmang (Busy/Hectic), which sells cheap goods. Its revenue surged by 75 percent in the first three quarters of last year, with users from county towns and township stores accounting to 58 percent. Even Aldi, the German hard-discount supermarket famous for low prices, has surpassed 100 stores in China this year. A report by Bain is particularly interesting: urban fast-moving consumer goods sales rose by 3.6 percent last year, but the average price dropped by 2.6 percent. This shows that people are not using any less daily necessities, but they specifically choose what? They specifically choose the supermarket's own unbranded white-label products to buy, resulting in the sales of these unbranded products skyrocketing by 57 percent.

However, I must also remind everyone that low-priced substitutes are themselves slowing down. Pinduoduo's revenue in the second quarter of this year only grew by 8 percent, the lowest in four quarters. Mingming Henmang's growth rate was 282 percent in 2024, but dropped to 75 percent last year. Large supermarkets and chain stores with annual revenues exceeding 5 million yuan in the CCP's National Bureau of Statistics had it even worse: specialty stores dropped by 10.3 percent in the first nine months, and department stores dropped by 2.9 percent. Does everyone see what this data chain is expressing? This is not a shift in market share; the entire pie is shrinking. Even the growth rate of the lowest-priced channels is diminishing, while the replaced channels are falling even faster, and even the food delivery service sector is dropping. The peak of the takeout subsidy war last summer was 200 million orders a day, but UBS data shows that by February this year, the daily average of takeout orders was left with only 110 million orders. In other words, once subsidies stop, even takeout orders will immediately shrink. Meituan suffered a net loss of 23.4 billion last year, and JD.com's new takeout business also lost 46.6 billion.

Merchants this year have become even more conservative, not even daring to stock up. Look at this: for this year's Double Eleven, JD.com has canceled the deposit and pre-sale policy, and Tmall compressed this pre-sale to five days. Because the city-wide network growth rate during the June 18 shopping festival had already experienced a cliff-like drop from 15 percent last year to less than 4 percent, completely scaring merchants to fucking death. We can understand this just by looking at the online shopping data for the first nine months. Food, as a rigid demand, still grew by 15.8 percent, but daily necessities only increased slightly by 0.8 percent. By September, even SF Express, a heavy hitter, saw its parcel volume drop by 7.25 percent. What does this indicate? It shows that ordinary people have already broken the habit of building up heavy inventory. They only buy food and daily necessities for immediate needs as they are used, refusing to spend a single extra cent of unjust money. Looking at big-ticket consumption, it is an even more direct portrayal of the shrinking household balance sheet. In the first nine months, passenger car retail sales plummeted by 21.7 percent, new home mortgage loans dropped by 22.1 percent, and even furniture and building materials saw continuous declines across the board. What does this show? It shows that ordinary people's expectations for future income have hit rock bottom, and at the same time, they refuse to carry long-term debts ever again.

If we go by basic economic common sense, you can't afford major purchases, but hey, surely the lipstick effect on small-ticket items should have taken off, right? As it turned out, even the lipstick effect failed today, leaving only a large population with little money and falling unit prices. The closest thing to the lipstick effect is movie consumption, where box office revenue in the first half of the year was directly cut in half by 40.6%. What was the piece of data that surprised me the most? Even Mixue Ice Cream, which costs just a few yuan, closed 1,289 stores, and Pop Mart, which has been called the panacea of emotional consumption, saw its third-quarter revenue expected to plummet by 50%. So the economic significance behind this is extremely brutal, because the so-called lipstick effect also has a prerequisite: that ordinary people at least still have some disposable money to buy this cheap dopamine. But when major expenses like buying a car or a house collapse simultaneously with tens-of-yuan lipstick consumption, what does this indicate? It indicates that the financial cushions of the middle class and young people have been completely pierced right through, and people have even fucking given up on buying psychological placebos costing under 100 RMB. This implies a terrifying reality: consumption in China has completely slipped from early quality degradation into a cash-flow defense war of cutting off all non-survival expenditures.

Now, looking back at the retail sales data from the the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), nominal retail sales in the first nine months grew by 1.1%, and the CCP's bragging characterization called it stable. But after deducting inflation, actual growth was only 0.2%, and in the third quarter it almost dropped to zero, with May even seeing the first single-month negative growth in 20 years. What's even more fucking ridiculous is its underlying structure. Look at this: retail sales of large-scale enterprises that actually submit real financial reports fell by 1.5%, and the so-called positive growth relied entirely on what? It relied on the CCP's statistics bureau making random sample projections using small street shops. But at this point, you fucking can't check it at all. Why? Have you guys in the statistics bureau descended to the neighborhood streets now or what? Since you're all playing with data, can you tell me how the fuck you statistics are compiled for the sales of egg pancakes? This is purely fabricated out of thin air.

As for the state subsidies that the CCP treats like a straw to cling to, this is essentially a speculative game of eating one's grain in advance. The state subsidies in the third quarter of last year did not create any new demand; they only played what role? They siphoned customer traffic from small channels into large shopping malls, and then sucked dry future demand in advance. Once the subsidies pull back to 250 billion this year, the projected home appliance replacement volume is directly cut in half from 180 million units last year to 90 million units. Look, as soon as the subsidy tide recedes, its true colors are immediately revealed, right? There is also data from the CCP's own tax bureau: in the first nine months, China's consumption tax fell by 4.1%. Fucking hell, so-called promoting consumption couldn't even protect the tax revenue! So why doesn't the public take the bait no matter what moves the CCP makes? They can't afford to take it! Just take a look at the household balance sheet and it all makes sense. In the first nine months, household deposits surged by another 9.39 trillion, but loans saw a net decrease of 1.03 trillion. The consumption propensity of urban residents has dropped to 60.8%, meaning for every 100 RMB earned, they only dare to spend 60 RMB, while the rest is either deposited in the bank or used for early mortgage repayment.

Actually, this can be completely explained from the perspective of consumer psychology! When a family faces a situation where kids graduate and find it hard to find a job, adults' income expectations are being lowered, and at the same time their broken, shitty houses are still falling in value, it triggers the whole society's resonance with the instinct for precautionary savings. What's the use of not distributing money at this point? When things are like this, no matter how many discount and reduction subsidies the government hands out, it's useless, because ordinary people are spontaneously carrying out a fierce balance sheet repair operation, centered on not borrowing money, hoarding grain, and stubbornly clinging to the life-saving cash flow in their hands, which will crush all consumer desires. What is the prerequisite for consumption? It is a sense of security and solid, positive expectations. What slope is the real consumption momentum actually on? We can run a simulation by breaking down the account books of these large enterprises into three ledgers. The first is the category of automobiles, home appliances, and communications covered by the CCP's state subsidies. Together, these five categories sold 5,074.6 billion RMB in the first nine months of this year. Based on year-on-year back-calculation, the same period last year was 54,914 billion RMB. In other words, these five categories combined dropped by 7.6%. Look, what is this? This is the pullback after pulling demand forward last year.

The second account is for the absolute necessities of survival: grain, oil, food, drink, and medical care. The weight of this portion in total retail sales has increased by another 1.1 percent or so. Fuck, it's truly hilarious! It's that classic, special ability of the CCP to adjust its narrative again! What is the CCP's game plan? It's that even if the poor are as poor as can be, they still have to eat and they still have to take medicine, right? This is the only fig leaf that allows the CCP's total retail sales data to maintain positive growth. But what truly determines the life or death of enterprises is the third account. This account covers the discretionary spending of the middle class, which has no subsidies to fall back on—things like clothing, beauty products, jewelry, and building materials. Hey, it's all these categories, totaling around two trillion yuan, and even this, goddamn it, is full of water. The most typical example is that in September, the price of gold jewelry skyrocketed by 22.5 percent, but the sales volume of gold and silver jewelry actually fell by 9.6 percent. A simple division shows that the actual sales volume plummeted by 26 percent. If you add automobiles, the largest category of discretionary consumption, back into this basket, the overall nominal growth rate would immediately drop to negative 7.9 percent. It's not just these that are seeing negative growth; catering and tourism are as well.

So the entire data logic is now completely closed-loop. The CCP's National Bureau of Statistics is using the survival necessities of daily life to forcibly offset the collapse of commercial consumption. Based on this calculation, my core judgment on the discretionary consumption expenditure of the urban middle class this year is a nominal contraction of at least 3 to 4 percent. After stripping out inflation, it is actually falling at a slope of negative 4 to negative 5 percent per year. If we lengthen the cycle and include the base raised by last year's national subsidies, the actual sales of home appliances and automobiles have fallen by 11.6 percent and 16 percent respectively over two years. This is the most authentic downward slope of China's private consumption after stripping away the CCP's statistical magic. Look, everyone, this is actually an iceberg. The total retail sales above the water line is that 1.1 percent the CCP is bragging about, along with things like the 'record-breaking' GMV of Double 11, the 'record-breaking' number of visitors during the National Day holiday, the rising share of service consumption, and the five-year high in the advertising market. These are all nominal values, and they are all indicators that only report volume, such as number of people or number of items. And what is below the water line? Sales above the quota fell by 1.5 percent, consumption tax fell by 4.1 percent, daily average GMV fell by 8 percent, per capita spending during the National Day holiday has fallen for four consecutive years, the return rate has fucking exceeded 70 percent, the number of consumer goods clients for Focus Media also fell by 16 percent, and passenger cars are even worse, down 22 percent. Household loans have seen a net reduction of one trillion yuan. What is the water line? The water line is price. You only report volume but not price, you only report nominal values but not actual ones. This is how the CCP 'levels out' its figures. Therefore, China's consumption this year is not growing steadily; it is undergoing a structural contraction under the cover of 'trading price for volume.' The hardest cuts are being made to the expenses that the middle class can choose to buy or not buy. The characteristics are: no brand loyalty, no stockpiling, and no borrowing.

Let's look ahead to next year. First, look at the national subsidies the CCP is pushing. The 250 billion yuan in subsidies for this year was all spent before September 30th. The fourth batch of 69 billion yuan is being issued on top of Double 11, but are subsidies useful? Subsidies only postpone demand; they cannot solve the consumption problem in the long run. And now, given the current fiscal state of the CCP, they will continue to taper off. The overdraft for home appliances and automobiles this year was too aggressive, so compared to next year, the first half will inevitably see a further decline. On the export side, exports contributed one-third of GDP growth last year. In the first three quarters of this year, according to the CCP's own metrics, exports rose by 16.4 percent, meaning that the excess capacity China is offloading is entirely dependent on external markets. Once the demand from the U.S. capital expenditure cycle weakens, there is no domestic demand to absorb this capacity, and at that point, the price war will have to return to the domestic market and continue. Household loans are seeing a net reduction, mortgage loans fell by 22.1 percent, and the propensity to consume is still trending downward. Without direct fiscal transfer payments to households, this deleveraging process will not stop on its own.

And when we stack national subsidies, exports, and household consumption together, what do we see? We see low desire, de-branding, and extreme cost-effectiveness. This is not a phased change; what is this most likely? It is a new equilibrium. Platforms rely on subsidies and cost-cutting, merchants rely on budget cuts and exports to protect profits, and consumers rely on cheap alternatives and non-consumption to preserve cash. In other words, the three parties participating in consumption are together maintaining the nominal GMV at this level, but the price is the suppression of real prices. According to economic laws, what is the next step? It is a large-scale clearing of the supply side. Last year it was the collective losses of department stores and supermarkets, this year it's the double-kill of jewelry and home appliances, so who is next year's turn? Next year it will be the turn of small and medium-sized brands that survive on traffic buying and third-party operations. You can change the caliber of your platform's battle reports every year, but who are you fooling with this data? Are you fooling yourself? No. Therefore, China's consumption will continue to deteriorate next year, so don't believe the fucking bullshit the CCP is blowing. Alright, that's all for today.