China rules the world when it comes to online shopping: just a few clicks buys you a new car or swimming pool, 10,000 pairs of sunglasses or a field of cabbages. But just when the most jaded e-shopaholic thinks they’ve seen it all, China does it again: this time, a 36,000 square meter (388,000 square foot) skyscraper that is the eighth-tallest building in Shanghai.

Shanghai Tomorrow Square goes under the hammer from 10 a.m. on Saturday in a 24-hour auction on e-shopping giant Taobao’s Judicial Auction Online Platform. With a starting price of its assessed value of 2.57 billion yuan (US$376 million), bidders just need to foot the 200-million-yuan deposit for the opportunity to snap up the seventh to the 32nd floors, boasting 246 hotel-style apartments. The package does not include the tower’s 23rd-floor refuge level.

That such a prize asset should come to market in such a public manner is down to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s very public anti-corruption campaign. The property now belongs to the bankruptcy administrator for 15 affiliated companies that were part of the group led by CEFC China Energy, a privately held energy and financial conglomerate that failed in March this year.

CEFC was founded by entrepreneur Ye Jianming in January 1980 with a registered capital of 10.5 billion yuan and quickly grew to become one of China’s biggest private companies. But – in an order that reportedly came from Xi himself – Ye was detained in March 2018 and put under investigation for suspected bribery.

It’s not the first time the authorities have auctioned off confiscated property on this scale. In August last year, the 39-floor Pangu Plaza was sold online for the equivalent of US$734 million after having been seized from fugitive billionaire and self-anointed whistleblower Guo Wengui.

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