Singles Day sales surge 14.2% to record $238b

Online retail sales across comprehensive e-commerce platforms, instant retail and community group buying during this year's Singles Day shopping festival reached 1.695 trillion yuan ($238.3 billion), an increase of 14.2 percent year-on-year, according to Chinese data analytics company Syntun.

Revenue from e-commerce platforms rose 12.3 percent year-on-year to 1.619 trillion yuan during this period, while instant retail sales stood at 67 billion yuan, surging 138.4 percent compared to the same period last year.

Tmall, Alibaba Group's business-to-customer platform, led the sales rankings, followed by JD's online marketplaces and ByteDance's short-video platform Douyin.