China’s e-commerce website JD.com sales reached $19.14 billion on Singles’ Day

**JD.com**, China’s e-commerce behemoth, said on Sunday that sales for Singles’ Day — and its run-up — reached CNY 127.1 billion ($19.14 billion), up 50 percent from a year ago. [caption id=“attachment_3931343” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image: Reuters[/caption] Sales included 11 days of transactions, JD said in a statement, unlike its rival Alibaba, which reported on Saturday that its **one-day sales reached CNY 168.3 billion** ($25.35 billion), up 39 percent from last year. Singles’ Day, an annual 24-hour buying frenzy that takes place in China on 11 November has emerged as the world’s biggest shopping event. It exceeds the combined sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the United States. JD started its sales event on 1 November, to reduce delivery bottlenecks and to give users more time to make their purchasing decisions, it said. Fresh foods and cosmetics were some of the online retailer’s biggest movers, with JD selling 500,000 Thailand black tiger shrimp and 55 million facial masks over the period. The company also said it sold CNY 500 million in air conditioners over a 30-minute period, and CNY 100 million in televisions over a one-minute period.