With the US-China trade war in its 16th month, will the Singles’ Day shopping extravaganza continue to shine?

Before Singles’ Day became known as China’s biggest online shopping spree, it was simply a day on November 11 when people could celebrate being single in a society which traditionally favours couples.

 Urban legend has it that Singles’ Day was invented in 1993, by four single male students in a Nanjing University dormitory – then the idea of a day for singles quickly caught on throughout campus and later spread to other universities and to society in general.

Catching on to the trend, e-commerce company Alibaba held its first Singles’ Day celebrations as a small promotional event in 2009, encouraging merchants to offer discounts to consumers.

The idea was that singles should treat themselves and buy themselves something nice. That day, Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, raked in US$7.8 million in sales on its e-commerce platform.

A decade later, Singles’ Day is no longer just a novel way to drive sales. The festival has evolved into a multibillion-dollar event, dubbed the “commercial Olympic Games” by Alibaba chief executive Daniel Zhang Yong, and is watched closely by industry insiders and analysts alike as a bellwether for Chinese consumer spending.