Alibaba Group opted not to disclose the final sales tally of its annual Singles Day shopping festival for the first time since it started the event in 2009, saying only that results were in line with last year. Rival JD.com also did disclose GMV or sales growth, but said that Apple sold over 1 billion yuan ($140 million) worth of products in the first minute of the event’s final sales period on Thursday evening.
Last year’s 8.5% rise in gross merchandise value (GMV) for Alibaba’s platforms had been its lowest yet, following a 26% jump in 2020. Before 2020, the festival was a one-day event.
Other indicators showed that Chinese consumers clutched their wallets tight this year and continued seeking relatively economical home brands over pricier expensive labels, as consumer sentiment has been hit by stringent COVID-19 curbs and a sharply slowing economy.
Citi analysts said this week they were conservatively forecasting Alibaba’s GMV for the event to range from 545 billion yuan to 560 billion yuan ($75 billion to $77 billion), with growth of 0.9% to 3.6%.
The e-commerce giant has for over a year toned down hype around the event as Chinese President Xi Jinping increasingly emphasises “common prosperity” – a push that seeks to eliminate growing wealth inequities and clamp down on what the Communist Party sees as excessive behavior.
MacDailyNews Take: “Excessive behavior.”
As Robert Kennedy said:
The tyranny of Communism is as old as the Pharaohs and the Pyramids – that the State stands above all men and their individual aspirations.
“Communism doesn’t work because people like to own stuff.” — Frank Zappa
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“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau. What an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight!”
Ludwig von Mises
“Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years. Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called farm price supports. Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance. Socialism is their name for anything that helps all the people.”
~ Harry S. “The buck stops here” Truman, 1952
Communism possesses a language which every people can understand – its elements are hunger, envy, and death. — Heinrich Heine
Truman was an establishment toadie.
The problem in Venezuela is not that socialism has been poorly implemented, but that socialism has been faithfully implemented. From the Soviet Union to Cuba to Venezuela, wherever true socialism or communism has been adopted, it has delivered anguish and devastation and failure. Those who preach the tenets of these discredited ideologies only contribute to the continued suffering of the people who live under these cruel systems.
― President Donald J. Trump
That quote is taken out of context, but you likely know that and are just being deceitful, as you and your ilk are wont to be.
“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”
― Harry S. Truman
“I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.”
― Harry S. Truman
Hmmm…
The goal of socialism is communism.
Vladimir Lenin
I love state-ism…it’s so progressive, but it always seems to end up in the same way.
“The first thing I had to get used to was that no one was watching us. We could come and go as we pleased. We could say what we liked to anyone without worrying about them reporting us. I found out I could criticize or praise the US government at university and it didn’t make any difference. People either agreed or disagreed and there were no consequences. We could speak openly about being Christians and no one came for us. I would often speak of the evils of communism and how happy I was to be an American. I could even love you with no fear. Americans do not know. Americans just do not know. Of all the people in the world, you do not know what freedom means. And you’re black! Who should care more about freedom than black people?”
– College Girlfriend from China
She was writing to me about Ronald Reagan back in 1977, when I was still a dumb-^&%$ leftist.
Put your money where your mouth is.
How about instead of pasting random quotes out of context you actually put an effort toward cutting ties with the red blocks on this handy little map:
Oh no, can’t do that. From individual level to state policy, the USA is a blatant addict. Look at glaring hypocrisy #1: Every US president has practically crawled to one murderous authoritarian regime after another in Saudi Arabia for special access to oil, waging wars to camp on corporate pipelines and wells using trillions of dollars in taxpayer money to keep Big Oil in the green. Apparently nobody cares that Saudi Arabia and other oil states are morally corrupt and the primary source of 9/11 terrorists.
Next addiction: cheap labor. Americans on average don’t actually like to work that hard. The myth of the self-made man is alive and well but since America began, they imported slaves in the same tradition as the corrupt British crown. When that became illegal, the moneyed class pushed Jim Crow economic slavery as far as it could go, pushing not only native Americans and blacks but also Irish and Italian and Jewish immigrants to the bottom of the pecking order with filthy sweat shop conditions far worse than Shanghai today. Then seeking still more profitability, the sons of the robber barons moved the factories to Asia. Americans flocked to Walmart to buy the disposable plastic imported junk. Nobody in the USA has successfully held any boycott to stand firm against cheap foreign labor, initial purchase prices were all that mattered. Nothing has changed. You keep buying iPhones regardless of where in Asia they’re assembled, and bitch about the price of anything increasing. With that attitude, no production is coming back (as predicted by Saint Jobs himself).
Americans have clearly established repeatedly for more than 2 centuries that they care more about cheap goods than they do about model of government, the conditions of the laborer, or the environmental destruction that ensues. It’s hypocritical to claim otherwise. Corporate leaders give you what you want, and their puppet congressmen make them richer while you pave roads for them, and you continue to shill for Apple, the richest most outsourcing company in the world. Ironic to pretend you give a care about what Xi says or does, or what power he has, when you spent the last 3+ years demanding that DJ Cheeto and his circus of felons be enacted Prez for Life.
Objectively (for those of us who believe in facts), the most democratic (and happiest, and healthiest) outcomes are clearly coming from Scandinavia … states that the mean spirited label-pasters here would obviously moan as being socialist. How can that be? Those people don’t hold massive rallies, spout logical fallacies and unfounded theories, or insult everyone else. How could any European state possibly be better than MAGA-kuntry? Well I guess you’d have to stop pasting labels and get something done to understand. (“Support Our Troops” is supposedly not socialist, but “Support Affordable Heathcare For All” is socialist and very evil, go figure.) The label-pasting has gone on long enough, and you know exactly who I’m talking about on this forum.
Level-headed Americans dream of the USA someday getting rid of the charlatans and electing boring pragmatic bureaucrats that serve people over corporations (or their own pocket books). Scandinavian efficiency and pragmatism in government blows away just about every corner of the USA, and the facts are there to see. The USA isn’t #1 in most measures that matter. Despite the extreme rhetoric you few blowhards here have for people working together and co-funding what needs to get done, the numbers clearly show that kind of socialism works better for all citizens. What a concept, community-minded people helping each other. Instead what this site sees every day is a pile of political attacks from blatant hypocrites spewing their vitriol from behind their Chinese-built computers standing next to their Saudi-supporting gas guzzlers, drinking imported coffee from some non-democratic “sh!thole country” you can’t identify on a map, claiming that democracy would be better if a out-of-touch orange figurehead took out his sharpie and personally chose your representatives for you. Fix your own sustainability and democracy before wagging a finger at others.
“Objectively (for those of us who believe in facts…”
Love the implication…all those with different opinions are luddites. Can I help you down off your high horse? Sounds like one that has the “I believe in (the) science” lawn placard. First to announce is “funny.” 2nd the need to announce is pure hubris…as the need to distinguish from the plebs.
Coming from the Economist…a true straight shooter…always objective. True democracies…noting Canada and Aus…two countries that were the most rigid with Covid policies and aggressively challenged speech. Canada has long had a “proper speech” penchant.
Democracy, in it’s purest form has a strong relationship to indi freedom. This often means there are going to be people that MAY cause some to inhibit freedom for all, because of the nuts. I’ll take, any day, a scenario that freedom is broad and wide, while having to live with those that may bracing challenge…vs a Govt that thinks taking freedom away from law-abiders to protect from the few.