China’s Singles Day is a Bonanza for Alibaba (BABA), JD.com (JD)

Shoppers have spent more than $9 billion in the first 12 hours.

Comparatively, Americans spent just $1.5 billion online on last year’s Black Friday, the Friday before Thanksgiving, one of the biggest sales days of the year in the U.S.

At 9.52, the gross merchandise volume surpassed 50 billion yuan, approaching the totalamount of 57.1 billion yuan a year ago. By comparison, 2014’s Cyber Monday promotional event generated an estimated $2.65 billion in sales.

The metrics mostly highlights the buying power of Chinese consumers which by all means is astronomical. A holiday was given on 11 November to bachelors to rejoice their single life.

The company’s competitor JD.com also had soaring sales figures. In the past, Alibaba used to win the national champion award convincingly. Although it didn’t disclose its revenue from the day, the firm processed 32m orders, up 130 per cent from past year. The goal is to assist USA businesses in becoming e-commerce companies like Amazon.com Inc. using Alibaba services, including its logistics, payments operation and cloud computing, he said.

The global online shopping carnival involves more than 40,000 merchants, introducing over30,000 brands and six million kinds of goods. Alibaba expects 700 million orders to be shipped today.

Alibaba has recorded a GDV of $14.33 billion in China’s most massive annual sale.

“Alibaba is positioned as the number one player in the Chinese e-commerce market, so it has to be seen to be maintaining, or gaining ground really”, said Duncan Clark, chairman of Beijing-based tech consultancy BDA.

The company had promotions across all categories that began from midnight to next 24 hours. Moreover, Chinese citizens are well aware that an economic slowdown is prevailing.

And Enda Breslin, head of sales and business development at eBay Enterprise, argues that with record-breaking sales, it is “baffling” that Singles Day is not spoken about more in the west.

“I have been saving up to make a few electronic purchases on Singles Day, including a new laptop and camera”, said Michelle Yuan, a banker.