Alibaba's Singles' Day sales hits new record of 200 billion yuan

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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd said that as of 10:28 BJT on Sunday its transaction volume hit a new record of 200 billion yuan, or 28.75 billion US dollars, as this year's Singles' Day shopping spree comes to an end in less than two hours.

During last year's event, sales reached 168.2 billion yuan (24.1 billion US dollars) in the one-day event. That number was been surpassed at 15:49 BJT on Sunday.

This year marks the tenth Singles' Day or Double Eleven shopping bonanza in China, and it is projected to be Alibaba's largest ever. The sales surpassed 10 billion yuan (1.4 billion US dollars) on Alibaba's online e-commerce platform Tmall in a mere of two minutes and five seconds, beating last year's record of three minutes and 57 seconds.

At 1: 47: 26 a.m. of November 11, Tmall sales skyrocketed to 100 billion yuan (14.3 billion US dollars), seven hours earlier than the same transaction volume in 2017 and beating 91.2 billion yuan (13.1 billion US dollars) the full-day turnover made on the same day of 2015.

As of 9:24 a.m., Shanghai tops the list for cities with the highest sales on Tmall, followed by Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou.

Tmall's total transaction volume is now being keenly watched as it to some extent offers wider insight into the world's second-largest economy's consumption power and retail health.

Major e-commerce players from the likes of JD.com and Suning have all scrambled to take a bite of the siren-like online shopping market, with assorted promotional activities and special offers launched.

(CGTN's Xu Mengqi also contributed to this story.)