Stop struggling, Double 11 is gone.

Text/Li Niannian (Baopu financial commentator)

I was talking about Double 11 with someone today. To be honest, I didn’t feel anything at all.I feel like this Double 11 has been scrapped.

Why is this happening? People like me tend to be crazy. I usually buy whatever I want without much calculation. I really don’t have the time or mood. Besides, what is there to calculate? Even in ordinary times, it is very cheap. After all, it is a deflationary era.

So, you said Double 11, so what? I buy it when it’s time to buy it, and I won’t wait for Double 11.

After looking at the bill, I bought some daily necessities and books one after another without waiting for Double 11.

Why is this happening? I think there are mainly three reasons.

01 Consumption decreases after retirement

First, the aging population and declining birthrate are advancing so fast that everyone is a bit stunned.

From 2022 onwards, approximately 20 million people will reach retirement age every year. What does this mean? that is,The consumption power of these 20 million people has suddenly dropped. There is a high probability that retirement consumption will be less than working income.. For example, you can sell your car and even your parking space, you can just take a taxi when you go out, you don’t need to be too particular about your clothes, and there are fewer people to interact with. Some people may have lost a lot of money due to health care products, but for most people, it is a fact that consumption declines after retirement.

After all, there are only a few people who have tens of thousands of pensions and travel around., not to mention that some people are not in good health and can only take a walk in the community.

On the other hand, there are fewer and fewer children.

The number of births has plummeted from 17.86 million in 2016 to 7.92 million in 2025., the shock wave of declining birthrate has been fully transmitted from preschool education to primary school.

Look at the kindergarten,The number of kindergartens nationwide will drop to 231,900 in 2025, a net decrease of 21,400 in one year; There were 32.2552 million children in kindergarten, a decrease of 3.5847 million;A total of more than 60,000 institutions have been closed since 2021。

Let’s look at primary school again.There will be a net decrease of about 8,000 ordinary primary schools in 2025, the number of enrolled students decreased by 4.0608 million in one year, and enrollment dropped by approximately 9.6% year-on-year, which was the largest decline in the past five years.

Junior high schools have just reached their peak, and the number of junior high school students is still increasing slightly to 55.0934 million. However, the school-age population has reached its peak and is expected to gradually decline from 2026.

Children are the most expensive, the same goes for our family. My annual expenses are about one-tenth of my children’s. Children are “gold-eating beasts” from birth to college – toys, milk powder, nutritional products, kindergartens, training classes, clothes, strollers, sports training, computers, medical treatment and medication, travel…

“The number of births has plummeted from 17.86 million in 2016 to 7.92 million in 2025.” This year is not optimistic either, which means that the growth of the population with the most spending power is actually slowing down. What is this concept?

What else do you expect from Double 11?

Starting in 2022, Alibaba and JD.com will choose not to publish GMV for the first time in 14 years.（The total amount of goods for all orders placed on the platform within a certain period of time）。爲什麼？There are more and more retirees and fewer and fewer newborns. This is the “Davis Double Kill”., no, “double 11 double kill”, what other data can be released?

The trend has become unstoppable.

02 The last retail era is completely dead

Second, usually the roll is too hard and the platform is scattered.

In the past, when Double 11 was popular, people paid more attention to Taobao and JD.com. Later, all platforms carried out Double 11, including Vipshop.

Then, various vendors sell goods online every day, including toilet paper, instant noodles, shampoo, fruits, everything, and they are extremely cheap. There is no way, these sellers take large quantities of goods, so the discounts are large, so they can sell them very cheaply.

In addition, manpower is not valuable here, and express delivery is also cheap.

Therefore, sometimes I buy kitchen supplies online for only a few yuan and they are very useful, and I am made to doubt my life.This is already against the laws of economics, okay? How can you do business at a loss?Chinese businesses are terrible.

Therefore, you see that all kinds of canteens and supermarkets have been wiped out.

The supply chains of various live-streaming salesmen are indeed strong, and then the money is in their hands. They dig into people’s pockets every day, and it’s Double 11 every day.. Therefore, when the big platforms come to actually market Double 11, everyone will either buy it normally or they will have no money.

This trend is not over yet, and the rents and sales prices of various shops are all discounted by 50% or even 30% off.

This is not the end of an era, but the complete demise of the last retail era.

03 Many families are reducing consumption

Third, everyone’s expectations for the future are not very good, and pensions are being eaten up.

Consumption data has been falling all the way.

The retail growth rates of two top cities in the first three quarters were negative., do you dare to think? But it happened, these cities all had negative numbers, so what about other cities? Not much better.

▲Business in the catering industry is slow

The growth rate of some cities is high, but their size is small, which cannot explain anything.

I was chatting with a person in the system one time, and he lamented:“Why doesn’t everyone spend money anymore?”哈哈。

Let me talk about a few scenarios:First, when hundreds of millions of farmers get old, their pension is more than 200 yuan a month. They want to spend it, but they can’t., is an objective fact.

Second, flexible workers don’t have much money.A relative of mine took an express train two days ago. The express driver said that heI worked 11 hours a day and earned 200 yuan, you read that right, it’s 200 yuan. You can say it’s an individual case, but then what?

There are a lot of people in the above two categories. Do you think they will be willing to spend money?The most I can do is eat, or take medicine if I’m sick. Some online ride-hailing drivers don’t even rent a house, but live in their cars, and have to remit money back to their hometowns for their wives and children.

Third, the children cannot find a job after graduating from college, or they may just find a job with a low income.

What actions do you think this family will take? Greatly shrink consumption. Because I need to save money for my children to meet their emergencies. So, consumption? Forget it, let’s not spend it. Who will save Taobao, JD.com, Pinduoduo, and Douyin e-commerce? That’s for rich people.

Fourth, the family’s income was okay, but the job was gone and the business was no longer viable., so all kinds of pressure come up, what should I do? If the elderly in your family have a pension and are forced to “gnaw on old age”, what do you think will happen to your family’s consumption when this process begins?

The old man didn’t spend much money to begin with, and now he doesn’t know how to spend much money. Some elderly people have relatively high pensions, and they will help their children and even their grandchildren pay off their mortgages.

A typical sad case I have seen is:The pension for the elderly was 8,000 yuan, but the younger generation failed in business and was forced to sell his house and live in a nursing home. Except for his own living expenses and the fees paid to the nursing home, the rest was given to his son and grandson because the grandson was paying for the house and the grandson had no job.

The terrible thing is that 2,000 yuan of the 8,000 yuan is the local financial subsidy of his city. It has disappeared since this summer, leaving only 6,000 yuan. Of course, you can also say it’s a case in individual regions, so I won’t go into details.

Will this family feel comfortable spending money? Won’t.

Look at the deposit,At the end of September 2026, household deposits in local and foreign currencies were 176.43 trillion yuan, and household deposits increased by 9.39 trillion yuan in the first three quarters.(a year-on-year decrease of 3.34 trillion yuan).

Household loans decreased by 1.03 trillion yuan in the first three quarters(Short-term loans decreased by 1.14 trillion, and medium- and long-term loans only increased by 106.2 billion). Everyone is saving more and borrowing less, actively repaying debt, and not leveraging.

So, what do you think will happen on Double 11?

Stop struggling, Double 11 is gone.