[eikaterine]

You're off by a factor of 10.

That being said, it still seems dubious--given China's online population of 538 million people, that's $5.7 average per person spent, which is a little higher than the average per person expenditure for last year's entire Cyber Monday ($1.2 billion according to the article, and around 210 million people online in the US as of February 2011 according to an online source makes about $5.6). In a country whose average urban per capita disposable income is around 10x lower than the average per capita disposable income in the US overall, I'm taking this with a grain of salt.

[westiseast]

fair point - the figures released by taobao are those in the article, so if you distrust those, then so be it.

Anecdotally, I believe it. Everyone I know was buying stuff that day, and not in small amounts - I bought 2 years worth of toothpaste, some baby products, shower gel... average per-order value needs only to be 180RMB, 86RMB per reported user, which isn't a lot of money at all here, despite income disparity.

[johnyang]

I understand you. But perhaps you are not familiar with the Chinese shopping habits and the situation now they faced with. High price good with heavy tax in the physical stores would be only sold with 50% discount in taobao online shops. If US could have such discount percentage, I believe that $5.6 could just be a small change