It is "one of the few bright spots in the Chinese economy," says Zeng Ming. He is talking about e-commerce. Mr Zeng, the chief strategy officer for Alibaba, a giant Chinese Internet firm, predicts that digital transactions on his firm's platforms will top l trillion yuan ($159 billion) this year-more than Amazon's and eBay's combined. That is a bold claim, but consider what happened on Singles Sunday. Invented a few years ago by students and seized upon by digital marketers, this festival for lonely hearts falls annually on the  llth day of the llth month (since l is the loneliest number).It is like St Valentine's Day, only worse. Singletons shower each other with tender gifts: a barrage of pearls; a storm of sweets. This November llth they spent a surprising 19 billion yuan on Alibaba's online platforms-a fourfold increase on a year ago, and more than double what Americans spent online last Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving, when retailers urge Americans to shop online). About 100m purchases were logged, accounting for 80% of the packages shipped that day. Couriers  were buried in parcels. So life is good for China's e-tailers, then? Not exactly. The number of digital marketers is increasing and online sales are booming. Consumers are enjoying lower prices, better service and more variety. The problem? The pressure on profits in Chinese e-commerce is worse than in America, reckons Elinor Leung of CLSA, a broker. "Almost no one makes money," she says. The fiercest battles are being fought between online retailers and their bricks-and-mortar  rivals.Dangdang, a firm. that resembles Amazon,.and 360buy, another online retailer, have cut prices fiercely. Tencent, a cash-rich online giant known for its instant-messaging software, is splashing out to win market share. 360buy has also just raised $400m from investors to do the same. But it is unclear how much longer such firms can burn through capital. What's the author's attitude towards online retailers in China?
Optimistic. Concerned. Sympathetic. Indifferent.