10 billion yuan spent online on Singles' Day

Chinese online shoppers spent a record breaking 10-billion yuan within 14 hours on Sunday.

The cyber shopping frenzy is in response to the Singles-Day holiday sales throughout the country. Major on-line retailers offered massive discounts of up to 50 percent.

10 main shopping websites are locked in an e-commerce price war, as they compete for singles-day customers. The Alibaba Group, operator of China’s biggest e-commerce platforms, says over 10-million people were logging onto online retail websites just one minute after the sales started at midnight.

The on-line purchases on singles day in 2011 reached 5.2 billion yuan, almost four times that in 2010.

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