In the West, today is the remembrance of the end of World War One. But in China, November 11 is Singles' Day and the entire country has prepared for an online sales onslaught.
In 2014, Alibaba posted more than USD9 billion in sales on China's Singles' Day. And this year rivals JD.com and Suning hope to emulate part of Alibaba's success with even higher sales.
In 2009, Alibaba turned a staid Chinese version of Valentine's Day into a growing e-commerce movement, and last year the company said almost 30,000 merchants took part on the online sales festival.
But site outages and bandwidth are a concern, as the discounts have started to attract even more shoppers.
Yesterday, Alipay, an affiliate of Alibaba Group, sent a message to its payment processing clients with the following message: "Nov. 11 is the shopping festival in China... This news article comes via ChinaTechNews.com , who is the copyright owner of this information and news. FintekAsia.com has licensed the rights to this article and any republication or re-distribution in whole or in part of this content is strictly prohibited without the express consent of ChinaTechNews.com
