Maggie Wu, the e-commerce and cloud computing giant’s chief financial officer, said: "Our domestic core commerce business has fully recovered to pre-COVID-19 levels across the board."

She added: "Our strong profit growth and cash flow enable us to continue to strengthen our core business."

Wu’s comments came as the Hangzhou-based group reported a 34 per cent jump in year-over-year revenues for the quarter which ended on June 30 2020.

Revenue for this period reached CNY153.8 billion (£16.35 billion/$21.8 billion/€18.1 billion), with income from operations surging 42 per cent to CNY34.7 billion (£3.7 billion/$4.9 billion/€4.1 billion).

Net income more than doubled to CNY46.4 billion (£4.95 billion/$6.6 billion/€5.5 billion), from CNY19.1 billion (£2 billion/$2.7 billion/€2.2 billion) in the corresponding 2019 period.

While revenue from cloud computing rose sharply from CNY7.8 billion (£832 million/$1.1 billion/€913 million) to CNY12.3 billion (£1.3 billion/$1.75 billion/€1.45 billion), e-commerce remains by far the company’s dominant business, accounting for close to 87 per cent of revenues.

Alibaba joined The Olympic Partner (TOP) worldwide sponsorship programme in 2017, in a deal announced by Alibaba founder Jack Ma and IOC President Thomas Bach at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The deal runs until 2028.

The company’s home market of China is scheduled to host the next Winter Olympics and Paralympics in Beijing in 2022.

Organisers will have been pleased to note that just seven new coronavirus cases were reported in the vast country on Thursday.

Since the virus emerged, China has officially confirmed just under 85,000 cases, with a death toll of more than 4,600.

Tensions with the world’s leading superpower, the United States, have however been ratcheting up over a number of issues as the US Presidential election approaches.