Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.

Coming up on today’s program

Double 11 rides in a climax today as the shopping gala shows resilience in China’s retail sales;

CIIE concludes with record of over USD80 billion in tentative deals.

Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours

This year's Double 11 Singles' Day shopping festival, spanning from October 8th to November 11th, marks the longest edition yet, a testament to the intensified e-commerce competition and robust purchasing power in China. 

Data from Tmall, Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group's business-to-customer platform, showed that in the first four hours after the shopping carnival officially kicked off at 8 pm on Oct 21, 174 brands saw their sales surpass 100 million yuan.

During this period, the turnover of more than 12,000 brands surged over 100 percent year-on-year and the sales of nearly 6,000 brands skyrocketed more than 500 percent compared with the same period last year. Moreover, sales from some top-tier livestreamers on Taobao Live, Alibaba's livestreaming arm, surpassing 100 million yuan within a short period.

JD, another major Chinese e-commerce player, has launched a subsidy campaign worth 10 billion yuan, and given discounts for commodities included in the consumer goods trade-in program, such as home appliances and computers. It has also stepped up efforts to upgrade supply chains and logistics services.

JD said it recorded a double-digit year-on-year growth in transaction volume, orders, and user numbers between 8 pm on Oct 14, when its promotional gala opened, and 9 pm on Oct 31.

This year, a series of pro-consumption policies, such as the consumer goods trade-in program, have played a significant role in bolstering the sales of consumer electronic products and household appliances on major online marketplaces.

Some 20.25 million customers bought over 30 million home appliances in China since the country implemented policy of giving subsidies for trade-ins of home appliances this year, according to the Ministry of Commerce.

On Tmall, the turnover of trade-in home appliances in Shanghai jumped 16 times compared with a week before the opening of sales, and that of Shandong and Guangdong provinces was 5 times than before.

The China International Import Expo (CIIE), the world's first national-level exposition dedicated to imports, concluded its 7th edition on Sunday, with this year's cumulative intended transaction value reaching USD80.01 billion, a new record since its launch in 2018. 

Greater Bay Area, Greater future

Hong Kong Financial Secretary Paul Chan said the SAR government will sign agreements with 17 more strategic enterprises – from the mainland, the US and Europe – on Monday to establish or expand their businesses in the city. These companies are involved in fields such as AI, big data and new energy, and 90 percent of them plan to set up headquarters in Hong Kong. Together with the first two batches of nearly 50 strategic enterprises, Chan said they will bring HKD42 billion in investment to Hong Kong and create more than 17,000 jobs.

Air China's domestically produced C919 aircraft, adorned with the national flag, has made its debut at Macao International Airport on Thursday and would remain in the SAR for four days, offering the public a close-up view of the jet. This appearance serves as a special tribute from Air China, celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China and the 25th anniversary of Macao's return to the motherland.

Next on industry and company news

China's auto sales rose 7 percent year on year to 3.05 million units in October, data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers showed Monday. In the first 10 months of the year, auto sales exceeded 24.6 million units, up 2.7 percent year on year.

ByteDance is adding video-generation ability to its ChatGPT alternative Doubao, as the short-video giant doubles down on a potential blockbuster in China’s fast-growing generative artificial intelligence market. The Doubao chatbot – powered by its namesake large language model (LLM), the same underlying technology behind ChatGPT – has started testing a new video function that is able to convert text or images into lifelike video clips, thanks to its “outstanding semantic understanding capability”, according to the app’s introduction.

Switching gears to financial news

Chinese lawmakers approved a State Council bill on raising the ceiling on local government debt by 6 trillion yuan to replace existing hidden debts, according to a press conference Friday. Under the new arrangement, the debt ceiling for special local government debt will be increased to 35.52 trillion yuan from 29.52 trillion yuan by the end of 2024. Also starting from 2024, China will set aside 800 billion yuan from each year's new special-purpose bonds for local governments for five consecutive years, thereby providing debt relief to replace 4 trillion yuan of hidden debts, according to Minister of Finance Lan Fo’an. The new measures will add a combined 10 trillion yuan to China's debt relief resources. 

China has offered over 2.08 trillion yuan in tax cuts, fee reductions and tax refunds in the first three quarters of the year, to support development of scientific and technological innovation an