Alibaba Group set a record CNY213.5 billion or USD30.8 billion in Singles’ Day sales, underscoring the resilience in consumer spending in China. The gross merchandise value was about 27% higher than last year, also a record, which was surpassed mid-afternoon on Sunday. Sales were helped by the participation of Alibaba’s Southeast Asia unit Lazada, as well as subsidiaries Ele.me, supermarket chain Hema and other business units.

“Chinese consumers, especially the millennials, are incredibly confident about their futures, and that tends to enable spending, when you feel like you’re going to make more next year than this year,” said Jeffrey Towson, Professor of Investment at Peking University Guanghua School of Management. “It’s commerce but it’s also entertainment, this is not necessarily people who are buying stuff that they need in life, it’s a big festival, it’s fun and there are good discounts.”

Alibaba Group Executive Vice Chairman Joe Tsai told the media in Shanghai: “China has developed consistently over the last 20 years. China’s GDP per capita was about USD800 per person back in 1999 when I joined the company, and has risen to about USD9,000 per person today, an average across 1.3 billion people. Is it going to USD20,000, USD30,000 in the future? Absolutely, it’s happening.”

Consumers took less than two hours to rack up CNY100 billion in purchases after the festival began at 0:00h on November 11, a milestone that took seven more hours to achieve last year. In just 30 minutes, 30 brands including Nike, Adidas, Apple and Xiaomi had crossed CNY100 million in sales. MAC sold out its 3,700 special edition lipsticks in one second. Health supplements topped the most popular imported products, with milk powder, diapers and skincare products also high on consumers’ shopping lists, the South China Morning Post reports.

This year is the 10th edition of the shopping day, which has grown to become the biggest online shopping event in the world and in recent years has included traditional bricks-and-mortar retailers as well as more merchants and consumers outside China. With sales dwarfing those of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the U.S., the festival has become the largest of its kind globally. Alibaba prepared 1 million square meters of bonded warehousing space, equivalent to about 140 soccer fields, through the Cainiao logistics network for the event this year, according to Alvin Liu, General Manager of Tmall Import and Export. Six procurement centers were set up in regions including Europe, North America, Japan and South Korea.