Singles Day shopping off to a good start

The extended Singles Day shopping festival this year saw booming sales during its grand opening on Monday evening, with high-quality and intelligent electronic products and livestreaming sessions gaining popularity among Chinese consumers.

As China's biggest online shopping event, the 11-11 or Double Eleven promotional campaign is expected to play a vital role in further stimulating the purchasing appetite of consumers, bolstering the recovery of consumption and shoring up economic growth, experts said.

Data from Tmall, Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group's business-to-customer platform, showed that in the first four hours after the shopping carnival kicked off at 8 pm, 174 brands saw their sales surpass 100 million yuan ($14 million).In addition, the turnover of more than 12,000 brands surged over 100 percent year-on-year and the sales of nearly 6,000 brands skyrocketed more than 500 percent compared with the same period last year.