Tag: china trade

With Russia’s Help, China Becomes Plastics Making Power In Pandemic

After giving up on recycling — American recycling that is — China is still in love with the plastics biz. In fact. their companies are becoming dominant in all things plastic, one of the most important supply chains in the world.

In other words, it will be yet another segment in global business that the world will need Chinese companies to get supply.

The pandemic has helped the petrochemicals industry make up for losses in oil and gas demand. Plastics are tied to the fossil fuels industry. Stay-at-home orders throughout the U.S. and Europe has led to more take-out food orders and a lot of that is being placed in plastic containers.

I’d like to highlight one thing though: China’s Sinopec is the behemoth in this space, and although you can buy into Sinopec on the U.S. stock market, if the incoming Biden Administration makes good on a Trump order to delist Chinese companies that are not compliant with the financial audit rules under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, then Sinopec will probably leave the NYSE.

According to industry consultant Wood Mackenzie, petrochemicals will account for more than a third of global oil demand growth to 2030 and nearly half through 2050.

The growth in both plastics consumption and production is mostly coming from Asia where economies are catching up with the western levels of plastics consumption, and becoming a source for plastics exports to the U.S. and Europe.

Within Asia of course, China is the powerhouse. Last year Exxon Mobil XOM -4.8% began constructing its $10 billion petrochemical complex in Huizhou, China.

Russia Joins China, Wants To Be ‘Indispensible’

Russia’s petrochemical giant Sibur is also locked into China, mainly through a Sinopec partnership. The two companies began work on one of the world’s largest polymer plants for plastics making last August, spending $11 billion on the Amur Gas Chemical Complex in Russia.

The two sides are intimately connected in the global plastics biz.

“Amur is a milestone in the cooperation between Sinopec and Sibur,” Zhang Yuzhuo, chairman of Sinopec, says in a press statement, calling it a “model for Sino-Russian energy cooperation.”

The entire industry, while not exactly the sexy and green industry the Davos crowd is promoting heavily in the Western world, is seen by China and still-emerging markets like Russia — as a development tool for regions far away from the big city hubs of Moscow or Shanghai. This is as much about job creation as it is pumping out plastic molds and the ethylene needed to make it.

Russia recently introduced negative excise tax on LPG and ethane used in petrochemicals which was a meaty financial bone thrown to Sinopec and Sibur’s Amur project, among others in the Russian far east. 

The Sibur Russia angle has gained momentum recently due to the ramp up in production from the new ZapSib Siberian facility last year. They make polyethylene and 500 thousand tons of polypropylene there; all must-have ingredients for plastics manufacturers.

Their relationship with Chinese investors, buyers and counterparties was one of the main reasons to even build that manufacturing plant in the first place, and is something the Moscow market likes to give as one of the best reasons to be bullish about a rumored initial public offering for Sibur.

Sibur has said in press statements that they expect “another jump in scale” of plastics chemicals output with the addition of the Sinopec project, Amur.

“Sibur has long built relationships with Chinese clients, partners, and investors and Sinopec has been our strategic partner since 2013,” says Dmitry Konov, Chairman of the Management Board for Sibur. Konov told Reuters recently that there was no timeline for any IPO in the Moscow Exchange. Moscow was home to one of the top four largest IPOs last year, shipping firm Sovcomflot.

Konov said their logistical advantages in the far east, near China, and competitive pricing for its polymers means they will “scale up these relationships to further expand the delivery of high-quality petrochemicals from Siberia to China.”

VTB Capital, a Russian investment bank, says those projects would allow Russia to become one of the world’s top four producers of ethylene by 2030. Russia wants to position itself as the indispensable partner to China in this space, much in the way that China has positioned itself as the key source for numerous key inputs, whether its cobalt used in electric vehicle car batteries, or solar panels now expected to criss-cross the U.S. in the Biden Administration.

Due to the pandemic, China has been focused on industries of the future alongside those needed to get itself, and its trading partners, out of the pandemic rut — those polypropylene Olive Garden to go containers might not come from China, but the plastics that made it sure might.

China remains the place for growth in this space, too. Plastics-use patterns and penetration are rising. Figure the Asians are a good 10 to 20 years behind the U.S. in terms of plastics use. They’re gaining fast.

China As Plastics Demand Driver

Plastics aren’t made from tree bark, that’s for sure. It comes from fossil fuels and non-organic chemical compounds that make the stuff designed to last hundreds of years.

And China now accounts for roughly 40% of the demand for the chemicals used in making it, an increase of just 20% in 2005. 

China’s ethylene demand grew by 8.6% between 2014-17 while global demand grew by only half that. 

Looking out five years, Deutsche Bank industry analysts said in a November 25 report that China will account for over half of global consumption growth for ethylene (to which Sibur and Russia are happy as their go-to for now). 

China has 50% self-sufficiency in ethylene and derivative products – the domestic desire to expand capacities and increase self-sufficiency remains high. Russia is a solution. But Sinopec will invest domestically, as will the big Western multinationals who are frowned upon doing similar work back home. Exxon is case in point.

China was a relatively late entrant to the global petrochemical industry, but that does not mean much. They ramp up, and rev up fast due to state subsidies and state-owned companies’ ability to obtain raw materials and pass them along downstream for pennies on the dollar. These are loss leaders, but China doesn’t care about that stuff. They are looking to produce plastics for the locals, and for the export markets, especially U.S. and Europe, which are increasingly disinterested in anything fossil fuels related, at least on paper. 

In the 1990s, the Chinese petrochemical industry was significantly smaller than the U.S. In 1995, China’s ethylene capacity totaled 3% of global capacity. In comparison, Japan had 9% of global ethylene capacity and Korea had 5% of global capacity. Ethylene is naturally occurring.

During the 2000s, China’s petrochemical industry grew substantially driven by government support and strong demand from government-directed infrastructure spending, a burgeoning middle class with rising disposable incomes, expanding residential construction and exports of course.

Between 2004 and 2012, China’s ethylene capacity — the flammable gas used to make ethanol for cars, fruit ripeners, and — more importantly, plastics — doubled to 11 million tons per year. Within 25 years, China’s capacity has moved from 3% of global to 16% of global. Who thinks they’re going to slow that down? Need plastic? China will have it. For now, Russia has the chemicals. China might just gain on that next. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. 

Kenneth Rapoza

Kenneth Rapoza

I’ve spent 20 years as a reporter for the best in the business, including as a Brazil-based staffer for WSJ. Since 2011, I focus on business and investing in the big emerging markets exclusively for Forbes. My work has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Nation, Salon and USA Today. Occasional BBC guest. Former holder of the FINRA Series 7 and 66. Doesn’t follow the herd.

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How One Bad Oil Bet Sparked A Global Trading Disaster

By now we are all keenly aware of the near-devastating impact that the novel coronavirus has had on oil markets and the fossil fuel industry around the world. (If this is news to you, what rock do you live under and is there room for one more?) But while a lot of the narrative here in the West has been about the historic oil price crash in what some are now referring to as Black April, the oil trading catastrophe actually started much earlier and can largely be traced back to the bad bet of just one man, Singapore’s commodities tycoon Lim Oon Kuin. 

The story of the oil market instability that ripped through Asia starting in China is not so much one of struggling oil companies, but a story of banking – that unsexy, behind-the-scenes sector that all too often gets none of the headlines and all of the control. It started way back in January, when most of us were just starting to gain some awareness of a strange and scary illness devastating the Chinese city of Wuhan.

Lim Oon Kuin, sitting in his office 2,000 miles away in SIngapore, watched as this news unfolded and made a decision. He decided that China would gain control of this epidemic before it turned into a pandemic and began stockpiling fuel, quietly adding to his already vast reserves. It should come as no surprise that that bet didn’t work out. 

As the coronavirus spread around the world and tanked global crude demand, as well as oil prices, a chain reaction of defaulted loans, was set off in Singapore that is still reverberating in global markets today.

“Banks tried to recover loans from Lim’s company, Hin Leong Trading Pte, triggering one of the biggest scandals in the oil industry this century,” Bloomberg reported about the bad deal that has left a permanent mark on oil trading.

“Lim’s empire collapsed, owing $3.5 billion to 23 banks, and the fallout from the debacle is still reverberating into 2021, shaking out large tracts of the vast and often opaque $4 trillion global oil-trading industry.”

While this may sound like an outright, unmitigated disaster, as with most financial meltdowns, there are winners as well as losers here.

The losers, as always, are the little guys:

“hundreds of small trading firms, many of them employing only a handful of people, who will find it expensive, if not impossible, to meet the increased demands for information from banks that have become wary of lending them money.”

This is to say that the big guys like Trafigura Group and Vitol SA will be gaining business lost by their small competitors, shoring up their oligopoly on trading. They not only benefit from increased confidence from finance companies who have become increasingly risk averse in this environment, they also have the capital to adapt to increased operational costs.

And, as usual, less developed countries will bear the brunt of the economic fallout from this sea change. As banks become more risk averse, re-prioritize their business models, and scale down, it’s going to impact small companies in small economies the most just while they are struggling with all of the other economic hardships related to this pandemic. In this case, the big banks truly were too big to fail. The same can’t be said for the little guys.

This is true, of course, for many market sectors, not just commodities trading. Across the world we’re seeing a sweeping consolidation as big companies are able to weather the financial storm of the COVID-19 pandemic and the little ones are folding. Look no further than the main street of your own town: as mom and pop restaurants struggle to make a sale, lines are down the block at the McDonald’s drive thru. As local shops shut down, Amazon becomes ever more of the globalized goliath it already was. 

More than anything, however, the story of Lim Oon Kuin and his bad oil bet is an object lesson in the butterfly effect and outsized might of the all-too opaque trading sector. His will never be a household name, but the impact of his oil gamble will continue to be felt around the world for years to come.

By: Tyler Durden

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Life in China Has Not Returned to Normal, Despite What the Government Says

Over seven years as a media executive living in Asia, Brian Lee has made the two-hour hop from Seoul to Shanghai more times than he can remember. But his last flight, on March 9, will be difficult to forget. On arrival at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport, Lee was told that regulations had tightened while he was in the air and all passengers arriving from South Korea now had to submit to 14 days’ government quarantine due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The New Yorker was driven to a specially requisitioned three-star hotel, where nurses in hazmat suits handed him a mercury thermometer, to self-check his temperature twice daily, and a single plastic trash bag. Meals are left outside his door at 8:30 a.m., 12 noon and 6 p.m. each day. Other than opening his door to pick up his food, he has not seen beyond the drab confines of his room since. “I’m trying to stay active and positive,” says Lee, 27, a business manager for Shanghai-based media platform Radii. “I’ve been doing pushups and trying to do all the reading and writing that I haven’t had time for.”

As cases of COVID-19 stabilize in China and soar across the U.S., Middle East and Europe, the Beijing government has been busy recasting China as a sanctuary from the deadly virus, which has so far sickened 169,000 and killed at least 7,000 across the world. China’s strongman President Xi Jinping even visited the central city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak, on March 10. China’s strongest leader since Mao Zedong declared that the virus was “basically curbed” across Hubei province, where Wuhan is the capital.

Virus Expert on the Wuhan Coronavirus Outbreak: ‘Don’t Be Complacent. We Must Treat It Extremely Seriously’

Hong Kong infectious disease expert Yuen Kwok-yung discussed the situation of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak with TIME in an exclusive interview. He warns that the disease is very infectious and control measures must be followed.

When TIME visited Wuhan in the early days of the outbreak on Jan. 22, students were still gossiping in cafes, while shoppers browsed for meat and fish for Lunar New Year festivities. But the city that Xi toured was a ghostly relic after seven weeks of bruising quarantine that has decimated the local economy. Still, China’s official press agency Xinhua has already announced a forthcoming book on how Xi’s “outstanding leadership as a great power leader” defeated the virus. The Great Power War will be available in six languages. State media has engaged in unabashed triumphalism while describing the U.S. response as “floundering.”

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But even as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda ramps up, the experiences of people like Lee show that life across the Asian superpower remains far from normal. Offices are slowly reopening but central heating banned for fear of spreading germs. Taxi drivers hang sheets of plastic behind the front seats of their cabs to cocoon themselves from passengers. One friend in Beijing returned to work to find “the receptionist in a full white hazmat suit.” Another complained that the incessant spraying of germ-killing bleach had murdered all the office plants. The guy who installed my cable TV has also begun hawking medical masks, which are de rigueur for entering any supermarket. Grabbing noodles with my wife means sitting diagonally across a four-person table to comply with social distancing rules. When I tried to book an appointment with a lawyer, it had to be in Starbucks—her office had banned visitors—and even then the barista chastised her for standing closer than four feet while witnessing me signing documents.

More than anything, suspicion has shifted outward. Whereas ethnic Asians have faced prejudice around the globe due to the virus, inside China the tables have turned, with foreigners now the target of suspicion as cases rise overseas. This has been catalyzed by state propaganda leaping on China’s apparent success in stemming the virus as evidence that its political system is superior to Western-style democracy.

It would be “impossible for European countries to adopt the extreme measures that China has implemented” to fight the virus, the CCP mouthpiece Global Times argued in a recent editorial. Sure enough, Robert Redfield, director the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told American lawmakers March 10 that [in terms of infections] “the new China is Europe.”

Security guards bark inquisitions when they see a foreign face—“what’s your nationality? where have you been for the last two weeks?”—so that many outsiders limit their social interactions to where they feel best known. My local barber says he not longer serves foreign customers.

Suspicion is especially pronounced for Italians, given their homeland’s rise to second in COVID-19 cases after China, with 25,000 infected. Ambra Schiliro, president of the Sicily Association in China, says that one Italian under self-quarantine in her Shanghai apartment had angry neighbors call the police to demand she move to a hotel. Andrea Fenn, a member of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in China, says that after some clients came to his office his Chinese partner discretely asked him, “Were they Italian? Where had they come from? Could I vouch for them?” Still, “It was an understandable reaction,” he says, “and nothing compared to the discrimination Asian people experienced in Italy at the beginning of the crisis.”

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Suspicion may be quite natural given Chinese state media’s self-serving tactic of highlighting the number of new COVID-19 cases that have arrived from overseas. On March 16, state media reported that 12 of the day’s 16 new COVID-19 infections were imported. On March 17, it was 20 out of 21. As such, in glaring doublespeak, Beijing’s own travel restrictions are deemed “essential measures,” even as countries that have closed borders with China are denounced.

Stefen Chow was lucky that he was permitted to self-quarantine in his own home upon arriving in Beijing after visiting his family home in Singapore. Only he was allowed to venture outside to collect deliveries, however, while his wife and two young children—aged four and six—couldn’t leave their front door for 14 days.

But much like what’s currently unfolding in the U.S., regulations for each Chinese city differ, and the lack of clarity regarding containment protocols has a chilling effect on business. Currently, even those traveling from Shanghai to the neighboring city of Suzhou for a meeting are technically required to submit to 14 days quarantine, perhaps even at a government facility, meaning few take the risk of venturing beyond the city limits. Those who have stayed at home must also self-quarantine if a roommate or family member returns from overseas or another province.

But in practice, implementation is largely at the discretion of CCP neighborhood committees, known as ju wei hui, or individual security guards — some of whom use their new power to shamelessly flirt with passers-by. “It has been frustratingly confusing,” says Ker Gibbs, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. “People don’t know if they can access their own apartment building, let alone their office.”

Returning to some semblance of normalcy is imperative for the Chinese and global economies. According to official data, China’s manufacturing and services sectors sank to record lows in February, car sales plunged by 80%, and China’s exports dropped 17.2% overall in January and February. As of March 18, China’s economy was operating at 71.% of typical output, according to policy research firm Trivium. Factories are being inspected one-by-one before getting the green light to reopen, but the pace of revival will depend on the nature of business; services can recover much faster than manufacturing, for example, given the latter’s reliance on knotty supply chains. High-tech and highly automated manufacturing also has a greater capacity to bounce back, being less labor-focused.

But with demand expected to crater across every sector, especially as the virus goes global, all anticipate lean times ahead. More than 100 real estate firms across the country filed for bankruptcy in January and February. Officials have been encouraging both state and private landlords to waive rents to prevent more firms going under. “I would still give [the government] reasonably high marks for communication and being proactive with business community,” says Gibbs.

Still, the state is keeping a very close eye on those attempting to re-energize the world’s number two economy. Across China, officials outside office buildings and residential compounds note visitors’ names, contact information, ID numbers and travel history in order to feed to a police database. People in some cities must register phone numbers with an app in order to take public transport. Online retail giant Alibaba has rolled out its Health Code App across 200 Chinese cities that rates users green, yellow or red dependent on travel history and possible contact with infected people. Anyone who has left the city in the past two weeks is liable to get a yellow code, and with green mandatory for access to most malls and office buildings in big cities, few book frivolous travel lest they jeopardize their score. A red code requires 14 day quarantine.

Apart from privacy concerns across what is already the world’s most surveilled state, the app has sparked consternation among those suddenly ordered to quarantine themselves with no explanation why.

There is growing weariness about measures that are little more than box-ticking. Masks are mandatory outside the home despite huge doubts over their efficacy. A temperature test is required to enter any shop, restaurant building, or even pass certain street corners. But these are so casually administered that people with readings so low as to indicate clinical hypothermia are routinely waved by. On countless occasions I’ve been rudely accosted by a supercilious doorman only for him to point the temperature gun at my coat sleeve. It’s especially frustrating since COVID-19 can spread while asymptomatic, rendering these tests ultimately pointless.

Bosses unused to employees working from home are putting them under extreme pressure, believing only increasing workload can ensure productivity at home. Miss Li, who works for Beijing start-up Bytedance and asked that TIME only uses one name as she was not permitted to speak with the media, says that she used to work 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week, commonly known by the shorthand “996” in China. “But now we joke that has become 007—midnight to midnight, 7 days a week,” she says.

And despite official efforts to spin the disaster, initial bungling and attempts to coverup the crisis mean the Party’s legitimacy will take a hit. A campaign to ensure the people of Hubei express “gratitude” to the CCP for containment efforts received short shrift. “The government should end its arrogance and humbly express gratitude to its masters—the millions of people in Wuhan,” wrote noted blogger Fang Fang in a post of remarkable bravery given China’s strict censorship.

Another comment appended to the profile of a whistleblower doctor quickly went viral: “The doctor risks her job to take interview, the reporter risks being charged with fabricating rumors to write the article, the media risks being shut down to publish the article, and people on WeChat risk having their accounts blocked to share the article. Today we need this ridiculous level of tacit cooperation just for a word of truth.”

Of course, truth in China is whatever the Party deems it to be. One recent afternoon, I noticed four medical personnel in hazmat suits loitering outside my apartment building. After a few minutes a neighbor pulls up with airport tags on her luggage. The medical staff check her temperature, make her sign various papers and escort her home. She won’t reappear for 14 days. Suddenly alarmed, I opened my Health Code App to check my rating is still green. China may spy victory over the virus, but normal lies a long way off, if it ever returns at all.

By Charlie Campbell / Shanghai March 18, 2020

Source: Life in China Has Not Returned to Normal, Despite What the Government Says

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Mar.12 — The faltering return of China’s oil refineries, power plants and gas importers shows it’s too soon to count on the world’s biggest energy user to revive beleaguered global prices. Meanwhile, while corporate-debt markets shut down for issuers in the U.S. and Europe for a stretch in February, with investors spooked by the economic hit from the coronavirus, China had its busiest month on record. Bloomberg’s Selina Wang reports on “Bloomberg Markets: Asia.”

Stock Markets Failed To Rally On China Trade Deal, Here’s Why

Topline: Although the U.S. and China have finally agreed on an initial deal that’s expected to defuse the 19-month-long trade war and result in a rollback of both existing and scheduled tariffs, the stock market didn’t surge on the news. Instead, markets ended the day largely flat: The S&P 500 finished the day up by less than 0.008%, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.012%.

Here’s why stocks didn’t make headway on Friday’s trade news, according to market experts:

  • The market may have already priced in expectations for an agreement prior to Friday: “Stocks already ran up 7% in just the past two months alone on the belief that a deal would be signed,” notes Chris Zaccarelli, chief investment officer at Independent Advisor Alliance.
  • Some experts remain wary: “The devil remains in the details,” points out Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick. “We await further word on purported aspects of the agreement including purchases of U.S. farm goods, intellectual property protections, technology transfers and access to China’s financial sector.”
  • “Investors are right to be skeptical,” says Joseph Brusuelas, RSM chief economist. “There’s a limited framework to the deal, since both sides just wanted to agree and avoid the looming tariff deadline on December 15th.”
  • “Contrary to what many believed—and were told in news stories—there is no immediate tariff relief, just an agreement to eventually rollback tariffs later as phase two negotiations progress,” Zaccarelli points out.
  • “I’m still suspicious of a major rollback on existing tariffs,” Nicholas Sargen, economic consultant at Fort Washington Investment Advisors, similarly argues. “Don’t rule out a selective rollback, since Trump needs to maintain bargaining power—he has to keep his powder dry.”
                                   
                                   

Crucial quote: “Is this deal enough to give the US economy an added lift? I doubt it because to get that added lift we need businesses to ramp up capital spending—and they’re going to stay on the sidelines until there’s greater clarity and less uncertainty,” Sargen says. “If trade uncertainty was behind us, we’d have gotten a bigger pop in the market.”

What to watch for: “Both sides need to figure out translation and legal framework first—and if they don’t come to an agreement on that this deal could fall apart very quickly,” Brusuelas says. “We’ll have to see if it survives the weekend and into next week.”

Key background: Officials from both sides have been working tirelessly to hammer out a deal ahead of the looming December 15 tariff deadline. Reports came in on Thursday that negotiators had agreed to terms, and President Trump signed off on them later in the day. Wall Street cheered the good news, sending the stock market to new record highs, though the market’s reaction was notably more tempered on Friday, despite further confirmations that an agreement had been reached.

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Sergei Klebnikov

I am a New York—based reporter for Forbes, covering breaking news—with a focus on financial topics. Previously, I’ve reported at Money Magazine, The Villager NYC, and The East Hampton Star. I graduated from the University of St Andrews in 2018, majoring in International Relations and Modern History. Follow me on Twitter @skleb1234 or email me at sklebnikov@forbes.com

Source: Stock Markets Failed To Rally On China Trade Deal, Here’s Why

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Chinese E-Commerce Giants Report Booming Singles Day Sales

A big screen shows the online sales for e-commerce giant Alibaba surpassed RMB 100 billion or US14 billion at 01:03:59 after the Nov. 11 Tmall Shopping Festival started midnight in Shanghai, China Monday, Nov. 11, 2019. (Chinatopix Via AP)

(BEIJING) — Chinese e-commerce giants Alibaba and JD.com reported a total of more than $50 billion in sales on Monday in the first half of Singles Day, an annual marketing event that is the world’s busiest online shopping day.

Singles Day began as a joke holiday created by university students in the 1990s as an alternative to Valentine’s Day for people without romantic partners. It falls on Nov. 11 because the date is written with four singles — “11 11.”

Alibaba, the world’s biggest e-commerce brand by total sales volume, adopted the day as a sales tool a decade ago. Rivals including JD.com and Suning joined in, offering discounts on goods from smartphones to travel packages.

E-commerce has grown rapidly in China due to a lack of traditional retailing networks and government efforts to promote internet use. Alibaba, JD.com, Baidu and other internet giants have expanded into consumer finance, entertainment and offline retailing.

On Monday, online retailers offered discounts on goods from craft beer to TV sets to health care packages.

Alibaba said sales by merchants on its platforms totaled 188.8 billion yuan ($27 billion) between midnight and noon. JD.com, the biggest Chinese online direct retailer, said sales reached 165.8 billion yuan ($23.8 billion) by 9 a.m.

Electronics retailer Suning said sales passed 1 billion yuan ($160 million) in the first minute after midnight. Dangdang, an online book retailer, said it sold 6.8 million copies in the first hour.

Alibaba kicked off the event with a concert Sunday night by Taylor Swift at a Shanghai stadium.

Chinese online spending is growing faster than retail overall but is weakening as economic growth slows and consumers, jittery about Beijing’s tariff war with Washington and possible losses, put off big purchases.

Online sales of goods rose 16.8% over a year earlier in the first nine months of 2019 to 5.8 trillion yuan ($825 billion), according to government data. That accounted for 19.5% of total consumer spending. Growth was down from an annual average of about 30% in recent years.

By JOE McDONALD

Source: Chinese E-Commerce Giants Report Booming Singles Day Sales

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Nov.11 was Singles’ Day in China, the country’s busiest online shopping day of the year. More than 35 billion RMB was spent on two online platforms, Tmall.com and Taobao.com, which are owned by China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba. A total of 170 million transactions were made during the day.

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