Chinese giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd released a report on record sales this Sunday, 213.5 billion yuan ($ 30.7 billion) in 24 hours.

Singles Day is the world's largest online sales event, ahead of Black Friday in the United States and Cyber Monday. This holiday appeared in China as an alternative to Valentine's Day for singles, so that people who are not yet in a pair, too, could please themselves with gifts. In the first hour after midnight alone, sales amounted to about $ 10 billion. This year, it took the company only 16 hours to surpass last year's sales record of 168 billion yuan. True, despite the record, the annual growth rate of sales fell from 39 to 27 percent, the slowest in the last 10 years.

This is because the company faces weaker sales prospects in the face of growing trade tensions between China and the United States. Earlier this month, management had revised its full-year sales forecast, lowering expectations, which in turn immediately affected the value of the company's shares, which this year fell by about 16 percent. The growth in online sales is also slowing in all directions in metropolitan areas, including Shanghai and Beijing. Alibaba said that about 75 percent of new users in the past quarter were from "less developed" areas of the country.