China splurges on world's biggest online shopping spree

Chinese Internet users spent billions of dollars in the planet's biggest online shopping splurge Wednesday, as "Singles Day" hit new heights, despite slowing growth in the world's second-largest economy.

The cumulative national bill for the day-long orgy of commerce dwarfed what Americans spent online over the five-day frenzy from Thanksgiving to Cyber Monday last year. Singles Day is not a traditional Chinese festival, but e-commerce giant Alibaba has been pushing November 11 -- a date heavy on ones -- since 2009 as it looks to tap the country's huge, and expanding, army of Internet shoppers. At first it was marketed as an "anti-Valentine's Day", featuring hefty discounts to lure singletons and price-sensitive buyers. But with sales hitting new highs year after year, it has become a massive -- and highly lucrative -- business opportunity embraced by the nation's digital retailers.

Competition for a slice of China's online population of 668 million is turning increasingly fierce. Alibaba kicked off this year's mammoth event with a television spectacular at Beijing's Water Cube Olympic swimming venue. James Bond actor Daniel Craig, and Hollywood star Kevin Spacey -- in his role as President Frank Underwood from the Netflix series "House of Cards" -- were just two of the galaxy of foreign and domestic stars involved. And the company's efforts were paying off in spades, with shoppers splashing out more than 10 billion dollar in the first 14 hours of the sale.

This year's tally had already outstripped last year's gangbusters effort, with the 2014 US dollar total of 9.3 billion dollar matched a little more than 12 hours after the promotion's midnight start. In comparison, desktop sales for the five days from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday in the United States last year stood at $6.56 billion, according to Internet analytics firm comScore. "The 2015 sale has eclipsed last year's final results in a little over half the time," the company said. In an earlier release Alibaba's chief executive officer Daniel Zhang said: "The whole world will witness the power of Chinese consumption this November 11." Another one of China's main online retailers, JD.com, said it had completed more than 10 million transactions by 10 am. That was almost twice as many as last year's total. (AFP)