Online shoppers in China have again blown the record for the most amount of sales made on Singles' Day, the world's largest 24-hour shopping event.

Alibaba' sales reached $38.4bn.

Singles Day has become the biggest 24-hour online shopping event in the calendar, and has been replicated at home and abroad, with Singles' Day promotions found at rivals such as China's JD.com and Pinduoduo as well as South Korea's 11thStreet and Singapore's Qoo10.

Known in China as "bare sticks holiday" because of how it looks numerically, Singles' Day began as an anti-Valentine's Day when students at Nanjing University started celebrating their singledom.

It was then adopted by e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2009 and it has now become a day when everyone, regardless of their single status, buys themselves gifts.

The Hangzhou-based firm, founded by eccentric businessman and China's richest man Jack Ma,  now refers to Singles' Day as the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival. By comparison, Black Friday pulled in $6.2bn in online sales in the US last year, according to Adobe Analytics which analysed 80 of the top 100 US online retailers.

A 2015 survey of 1,000 Chinese internet users, conducted by Nielsen, found that the average consumer planned to spend 1,761 yuan (£181) during Singles' Day.