Chinese consumers surpassed before midday last year's record for online spending on Singles Day, with retail giant Alibaba clocking up sales worth 57.1-billion yuan (R127-billion) worth of sales by 11.49am local time. Singles Day, on November 11, is a consumer holiday in China and the world's biggest online-shopping day of the year.It took Chinese consumers just three minutes to spend 1-billion yuan on Singles Day last year.This year, in five minutes and 45 seconds, online shoppers in China had splashed out five times that amount, Alibaba said.Within eight minutes they had broken the $1-billion barrier, and tripled that in half an hour.After an hour, Chinese consumers had spent more than $4-billion - double the amount spent during the same time period last year - taking just 90 minutes to part with more than $5-billion.After 10 hours, sales had reached nearly $8-billion, breaking through last year's record before noon.IDC, the market research firm, predicts that Alibaba's sales could reach $13.7-billion - an increase of 52% on last year.JD.com, Alibaba's smaller rival in Chinese online retail, said it had topped last year's orders by 11.58am. The e-commerce platform does not reveal its total Singles Day sales, but said it had received 14 million orders last year.By 6.26pm, it had processed more orders than on its five previous Singles Days combined.JD.com also sold $15.9-million worth of computer and office goods within 10 minutes and 230000 flat-screen TVs in the first hour.It said snack sales were seven times higher than last year and sales of imported wine had jumped sixfold by 10am. ..