China’s retail sales grew 3.0% YoY in September to 4.20 trillion RMB ($580 billion), maintaining moderated growth since May. For the first three quarters, total retail sales reached 36.59 trillion RMB ($5.05 trillion), up 4.5% YoY. Cosmetics showed strong performance with September sales increasing 8.6% to 36.8 billion RMB ($5.1 billion) — the strongest September growth in five years. January-September cosmetics sales totaled 328.8 billion RMB ($45.4 billion), rising 3.9% from a year earlier. The Double 11 (Single’s Day) shopping festival showed early momentum, with Tmall reporting 35 brands exceeding 100 million RMB ($14 million) in presales during the first hour.