Syntun: online sales during China's 618 shopping festival grew 4% YoY, a sharp drop from 15.2% growth in 2025, as China's consumer spending slowdown persists
BEIJING — China's consumer spending slowdown persisted in June, with growth during one of the country's largest online shopping festivals weakening sharply from a year earlier.
Context & Ripple Effects
618 has become a recurring gauge of Chinese online demand: growth was already slowing in 2022, Syntun recorded the event’s first GMV decline in 2024, and the 2025 festival relied on deep discounts amid consumer economic concerns.
The return to positive sales growth in 2025 did not establish a durable rebound. Syntun’s much slower 2026 reading reinforces that promotion-heavy festivals are producing less incremental spending as consumption remains weak.
First-order effects
- Alibaba, JD.com and other 618 merchants face a weaker festival demand signal, limiting the sales lift normally expected from their biggest mid-year promotion period.
- Retailers and brands have less room to use discounting as a volume-growth tool when headline festival sales growth has slowed sharply.
Second-order effects
- Marketplace operators and participating brands are likely to put greater emphasis on conversion, repeat purchasing and category mix rather than treating GMV-led festival results as a sufficient measure of demand.
- The weak aggregate result creates a tougher backdrop for discretionary categories; the reported 618 smartphone-sales decline is consistent with consumers becoming more price-sensitive when device prices rise.
Third-order effects
- If major shopping festivals continue to generate only modest growth after increasingly aggressive promotions, China e-commerce may shift from event-driven GMV expansion toward competition for a slower-growing pool of consumer spending.
- The pattern would also make opaque or selective sales disclosures more consequential: with leading platforms not releasing GMV in 2024, third-party measures such as Syntun’s become a more important benchmark for market health.
The trend: China’s flagship online retail events are increasingly functioning as indicators of constrained consumer demand rather than reliable engines of broad-based e-commerce growth.