It's November 11th and it's a record day already for Chinese shoppers. It's the so-called Singles Day online shopping festival where e-commerce platforms launch massive sales campaigns.

Alibaba initiated the event and today it's seeing its highest sales volume for the year.The transaction volume topped 1 billion yuan or 170 million US dollars In the opening 52 seconds of the extravaganza.

That number rose 10 times in the first seven minutes. At 3:19 pm Beijing time, the transaction volume reached 91 billion yuan, or some 13 billion US dollars, breaking last year's record for the entire day.

Alibaba Group CEO Daniel Zhang said the unprecedented level of engagement demonstrates both the consumption power of Chinese consumers and their embrace of online shopping as a lifestyle.