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When China’s new businesses are generating profits in a massive and genuinely rapid manner, the traditional general merchandise industry is in fact in the midst of experiencing annoyances.

Alibaba's senior vice president Zhong Tianhua predicted before the “Double 11” event that the annual Nov. 11 online Chinese shopping spree influencer and male fashion magnate blogger Li Jiaqi would help generate orders worth 1 billion yuan ($143 million) by promoting products through livestreaming. In fact, such a sales number is equivalent to annual revenue of some department store chains.

A survey done by Winshang, one of the most influential media platforms involving retail business indicated that most of China’s 72 major department stores all had annual revenue of less than 5 billion yuan during the year of 2018.

Newspaper Economic Daily reported that the general merchandise industry used to be a leading force of the retail business. However, the former “king of retailing” has to suffer slowed growth, negative growth and even massive shutdown of department stores given the impacts of new business models.

Statistics from China Commerce Association for General Merchandise (CCAGM) indicated that last year, 90 sampled department stores saw 4.2-percent growth in their sales volume and 6.4-percent growth in profits.

58 percent of them reported positive growth from a year before, while the rest suffered negative growth.

“From key indicators such as revenue of major businesses, the general merchandise industry is picking up,” said Chu Xiuqi, president of CCAGM.

However, statistics from China’s Ministry of Commerce showed that the growth of sales volume of department stores stood at 1.9 percent last year, the lowest among all segments of the retail industry.