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Mourning in Cuba; Cuban Exiles in Miami Celebrate Castro's Death; Leaders Across Latin America Lament Castro's Death; Fillon Wins France's Republican Primary; Syrian Regime Forces Advance in Eastern Aleppo; Alibaba Offer VR Shopping. Aired 12-1a ET

Aired November 28, 2016 - 00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:00:09] CYRIL VANIER, CNN ANCHOR: A week of mourning ahead in Cuba as the country marks the death of Fidel Castro and his mixed legacy.

NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR: -- to the top. France picks its conservative candidate for next year's presidential elections.

VANIER: Plus, Syrian opposition fighters struggle to hold on to eastern Aleppo as government forces surge into the rebel stronghold.

ALLEN: It's all ahead here. Thanks for joining us. We're live in Atlanta. I'm Natalie Allen.

VANIER: And I'm Cyril Vanier, glad to have you with us. CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.

Cuba is celebrating the life and legacy of long-time leader Fidel Castro this week. 21-gun salutes will mark his nine days of mourning up until his funeral Sunday. Cannons will also fire several times a day from Tuesday through Saturday.

VANIER: But what our reporter Ed Lavandera is seeing in Havana is that the people themselves are the remarkably quiet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: On the streets of Havana, Cuba a muted and subdued response to the news that Fidel Castro has died. We have seen this play out over the weekend. We have not seen an outpouring of grief or any kind of real emotion taking place on the streets. In many ways, you get the sense people are being very cautious, trying to figure out what they can and can't do, what they should or shouldn't do.

That is something that Cubans here in Havana are trying to figure out whereas the government says it is officially beginning the process of a nine-day mourning period that will begin on Monday with the ashes and the remains of Fidel Castro who was cremated Saturday morning not many hours after the official announcement was made Friday night that he had died at the age of 90.

There will be a procession of people who come to the Plaza of the Revolution. This is the plaza where Popes have held mass and this is where tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of Cubans are expected to appear and show their -- pay their respects.

After that the remains of Fidel Castro will be caravanned across the island from Havana to Santiago, Cuba on the far eastern edge of the island where Fidel Castro's remains will be interred on Sunday.

So this is the beginning of a long week of memorialization of Fidel Castro. And it has been interesting. In the initial hours in the first day after Fidel Castro's death in state media, state-run television played very little about this news. It is just now where we're beginning to see constant coverage on state-run television and the memorials that have been playing on the broadcast television here for quite some time. So all of that beginning to play out here in Cuba.

Ed Lavandera, CNN -- Havana, Cuba.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Ann Louise Bardach is a Pen Award winning journalist and the author of "Cuba Confidential and "Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington". She has edited Fidel Castro's letters from prison and interviewed him twice for "Vanity Fair" magazine. She has also met with his brother, Raul and interviewed other members of the Castro family.

She joins us now on the line.

Ann Louise -- thank you for joining us. I want to ask you first, Fidel Castro talked with you about death and legacy when you interviewed him in his 60s when you were talking with him about the possibility of retiring. Can you share some of that?

ANN LOUISE, BARDACH, AUTHOR (via telephone): That was a very funny moment in that very long interview in '94, in which he said "revolutionaries do not retire any more than writers do", very pointedly. And he was by then, in his early 70s. What he was saying in that interview which was quite a big "Vanity Fair" piece at the time, because he had stopped giving interviews for a period, he was saying I met my greatest challenges as a leader, as a comandante after the age of 60 because he was referring to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which had been a very generous sponsor and patron of Cuba to the tune of billions of dollars for decades and he had lost that. And Cuba was very adrift and the poverty was everywhere so he was loath to give interviews.

And eventually, you know, two trips. I met him first for like a half hour and then he gave me the second one, a kind of long, three and a half hour interview, which covered many, many topics.

ALLEN: He liked to talk for sure. And since you've interviewed him twice, I'm wondering what your takeaway was just from whether he was spinning you or could you see through that because he was a master of PR. [00:05:00] BARDACH: Yes, he was. He was a public relations genius.

And one of the wonderful comments in one of his letters is to a comrade, he says never underestimate public relations -- "propaganda" actually is the use he actually used. He said it is a soul of our struggle. It is the soul of our revolution. And believe me, he never forgot propaganda.

This was an interesting interview. He began it with the royal "we", Fidel Castro would speak most often using "nosotros" "we", not "I". And he kind of made a little joke saying look, we decided to speak to you because we realized you would never leave our island unless we spoke to you.

And then he went from there. The interview covered many of the issues at that time. It covered the great disastrous issues going on at the time with Haiti. He was very concerned about the United Nations even helping Haiti because he was very nervous about any interventions at all.

He was also quite baffled about Bill Clinton, who had just become president, and he was baffled -- he almost asked me what is going on about this issue with the women, why would women even be an issue? And then he made the comment, he said, you know, in many countries having a lot of girlfriends is regarded as a very good thing.

And he -- and I thought that was genuine bafflement. Then when I got into more delicate subjects, then the smoke began. When I brought up the treatment in Cuba of homosexuals, dissidents -- oh, we've never had a problem. We've never had a problem with homosexuals in Cuba. We never locked them up, et cetera.

And then at that point I had my wits about me to refer to my notes and I said, well, in fact, this is what you said and I would read the exact quote to him or several quotes in which he would more or less say that no homosexual could ever really be a member of the revolution, of the communist party --

ALLEN: He was challenging. He was challenging for sure and in denial. How does that separate, I want to ask you, from Raul whom you talked with, too, and what kind of Castro family will it be moving forward without Fidel Castro alive?

BARDACH: Well, the main thing to remember is Cuba is a dynasty. It's a Castro dynasty and has been so since 1959. And Fidel and Raul are in fact the most successful political partnership that I'm aware of in history. One ran the politics and the world stage, and one ran the armed forces.

In the case of Cuba, the armed forces run most of the major businesses and investments. Excuse me. There are other Castros in the pipeline. Are there any particulars you're interested in knowing about?

ALLEN: Well, I don't know. Give us one that -- take us out on. Someone maybe we don't know.

BARDACH: I would tell that there's two to keep your eye on and one is Raul's son, his name is Alejandro Castro Espin. He is never not by his father's side, whether this father be with the Pope or President Obama.

He clearly is going to be a player for the considerable future. He has two very important portfolios. One involves intelligence, which is the most important portfolio in the Cuban government and the other one is China and investments.

The other one is his son-in-law, Luis Alberto Rodriguez, and he has some other names as well. And he for many years has been the single most important businessman. He's also a general.

Everybody of consequence in the Cuban government is in the Cuban army. For instance as the son is -- he was a colonel and he was recently promoted and certainly he are be a general very soon. Those two men, the son and the son-in-law, will have major roles going forward.

[00:09:56] And on a lighter side is the very delightful Mariela Castro Espin, who is Raul's daughter. She's the one who introduced gay rights, transgender rights -- human rights in general. I would say that she is the liberal face of the Castro family.

ALLEN: Well, I want to ask you Ann Louise, while we wrap up here -- I take it that since you've been so invested in Cuba, you will continue to report on things there, correct?

BARDACH: Well, certainly for the next couple of weeks, which I would think will be very telling, especially the next week through the burial, which in itself is loaded with significance, we can discuss another time, how that came about this particular cemetery, why and where.

It's funny because Fidel Castro repeatedly said to me in our interviews, I don't give a whit about what happens to me. I don't know, maybe I'll get eaten by a shark when I'm deep sea fishing. I don't care. I don't care about glory or my name in history.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth and he's been working on his death, his burial and the processions we will see for some time now.

ALLEN: All right. Well, we thank you --

BARDACH: And I will guarantee you it will be spectacular, interesting and compelling.

ALLEN: Thank you, Ann Louise Bardach. We really appreciate it and we look forward to your stories about it. Thanks for joining.

BARDACH: My pleasure.

VANIER: A real slice of history there.

ALLEN: Yes.

VANIER: Fascinating. ALLEN: Absolutely.

VANIER: Let's see what's happening in Miami where crowds celebrated anew Fidel Castro's for a second day. Dozens of people gathered in front of the Versailles Restaurant in Little Havana -- that's a long- time haunt of the Cuban exile community.

ALLEN: People danced, waved Cuban flags and cars honked in support of (inaudible). Many Cuban Americans in Miami hope democracy is the next step for Cuba.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNNY CARDONA, CUBAN-AMERICAN SHOP OWNER: I have no intent going back to Cuba. So not even to visit, unless -- unless the government falls or there is a little bit more democracy.

JACKIE LAGUNA, CUBAN-AMERICAN SHOP OWNER: Democracy needs to happen in Cuba. That's really it. They want democracy. What does any country want for their people? Democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VANIER: For reactions in Latin America now, how leaders across the continent react to Castro's death really depends on their politics and some have simply acknowledged that he was a towering figure of the 20th century without really praising him. Others continue to look up to him as their mentor.

ALLEN: CNN's Shasta Darlington reports for us from Rio de Janeiro about that.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHASTA DARLINGTON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Fidel Castro was a charismatic but very controversial figure and that goes for Latin America as well. But perhaps here in this region more than anywhere else, he was also a larger-than-life idol during the 1970s and 1980s for many people when the military dictator seized control in many countries in South America.

When civil wars were sweeping through Central America some people even fled the violence and sought refuge in Cuba. Of course, he went on to become a populist leader and even after Cuba lost its main ally, the USSR, Fidel Castro's socialist Cuba survived and he reinvented himself as a mentor for a whole new generation of leftist leaders from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Evo Morales in Bolivia.

And he stood up to the regional super power, also the global super power, the United States, for some 50 years, railing against their policies, their ideologies and showing a region that was sick of being considered America's back yard, that they could be independent, that they could set their own course.

Which is why today, not only the leftist governments but even centrist presidents have come out and paid their respects to the history of Fidel Castro to what he has done for this region. You heard from presidents in Chile, in Argentina, the center right government here in Brazil calling Fidel Castro a man of convictions, and of course, in Nicaragua where they've declared nine days of mourning and in Venezuela three days of mourning where President Nicolas Maduro says now it's our turn, we are going to keep the revolution alive.

It does seem increasingly difficult however as the countries in Latin America continue to shift to the right and the one man who really embodied that leftist ideology has now passed.

Shasta Darlington, CNN -- Rio de Janeiro.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Shifting to the right -- we turn next to another country that we're following. French conservatives have chosen Francois Fillon to lead their party in next year's presidential election. A look at how the former prime minister defied all expectations and came out on top. Coming up here.

VANIER: Also ahead on CNN Donald Trump unveiled a new narrative in the presidential election. Now he's claiming that he won the popular vote too, in addition to the Electoral College vote.

That's all coming up.

[00:15:08] (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

VANIER: So we now know who is going to be representing the French Conservative Party in next year's presidential election and that would be Francois Fillon, former prime minister who resoundingly won the Conservative Party primary on Sunday with about 66 percent of the vote.

ALLEN: His rival Alain Juppe conceded and now pledges to back Fillon. Fillon says he intends to win voters from both the left and the right.

VANIER: Just a month ago Fillon was considered a very unlikely bet for the presidency. But he won over voters with a polished performance in televised debates as well as what he called his radical economic policy.

ALLEN: CNN's Melissa Bell has more on the man who defied expectations.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

[00:19:57] MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: With those words, the upset of the Republican primary became clear and Francois Fillon was thrust into the lime light.

Until last Sunday, no one had expected him to get past the first round. With a beer he toasted the fact that he'd beaten all six other candidates, including his former boss.

For five years Francois Fillon served as the flamboyant Nicolas Sarkozy's relatively self-effacing prime minister -- the job, a reward for backing Sarkozy during his campaign for the Elysee. After the right lost it in 2012 Francois Fillon slipped from the limelight, representing Paris as a member of parliament but also getting away from the capitol to the grass roots with a three-year campaign across the country that would ultimately see him defy the polls.

JEROME CHARTIER, FILLON'S CAMPAIGN MANAGER (through translator): The only part of the polls that really mattered were the trends. And the main trend was that for weeks Francois Fillon was the only candidate who was constantly gaining support.

BELL: But after his victory in the first round, Francois Fillon still had his work cut out and this time very much in the media spotlight.

FRANCOIS FILLON, FRENCH CONSERVATIVE PARTY PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE (through translator): What I refuse is the distribution of Christmas presents -- promises that made no sense that cannot be financed in a country that, let me remind you, is just about the most indebted country of the developed world.

BELL: His right-wing, (inaudible) economic program went down well with many on the right. Ahead of the second round, he met with those members of parliament who supported his call to scrap the 35-hour week, take on the unions and liberalize France's labor market. All things his ultimate rival, the more moderate Alain Juppe said could not be done.

By the time the two men met for their final debate on Thursday, the campaign had taken a decidedly unpleasant turn.

ALAIN JUPPE, FORMER PRIME MINISTER (through translator): We cannot ask civil servants to work more and earn less. This is what makes us different from one another.

FILLON: Ok. This is a major issue. This means Alain Juppe does not really wish to change things. He's a man of the system, with which he simply wants to tinker. Well, I believe that this is just second- guessing other people's motivations.

BELL: In the end, Francois Fillon proved more popular.

BRUNO CAUTRES, POLITICAL ANALYST: The very good (inaudible) and the capacity of Francois Fillon was the capacity of Francois Fillon to talk to different targets of the right wing, the liberal right wing that wants less tax, less state. less civil servants but also the traditional Catholic right-wing -- anti- abortion, anti-gay marriage but also the most conservative part of the right wing that wants to protect France from the outside.

BELL: Francois Fillon will now be taking that platform to the broader electorate in the hope that it will allow his party to (inaudible) ruling socialists and the increasingly popular far right.

Melissa Bell, CNN -- Paris.

(END VIDEOTAPE) VANIER: If current polling projections are right, and that's still a big if, six months ahead of the presidential election, Fillon could well face the leader of the far right National Front Party Marine la Pen in the final round of the presidential vote next year.

A top National Front official says that Fillon's views are outdated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FLORIAN PHILIPPOT, DEPUTY LEADER, FRENCH NATIONAL FRONT PARTY: He's blowing smoke in people's eyes in the same way as the Sarkozy camp did. He presents himself as a hard liner and questions multiculturalism, national identity, immigration. If you do a bit of digging, if you look at a bit of his performance, what he did immediately his credibility weakens.

And I noticed one particular thing -- Francois Fillon seems to have a problem with secularism. I don't know for what reason because of his personal beliefs perhaps but I know that he obviously has a problem with secularism where as I think we need a secularism that is strict.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: He also says the National Front Party welcomes Fillon as an opponent because of their striking differences over France's economy.

VANIER: Let's look at the U.S. politics now.

In the U.S. presidential election, winning the Electoral College apparently wasn't good enough for President-Elect Donald Trump. Now he's insisting that he also won the popular vote, even though Hillary Clinton beat him by more than two million ballots.

Nast: Fueling his irritation is an effort by the Green Party to recount votes in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Trump won all three states and a recount probably won't change that but still on Sunday, he unleashed a barrage of tweets to complain without offering a shred of evidence, he alleged and here's the tweet, "Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California, so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias. Big problem."

VANIER: He went even further with this tweet. "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I till won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally." Again, he offered no evidence to back up his claim.

ALLEN: Senator Bernie Sanders who lost to Clinton in the Democratic primary defended vote recount, even if they don't change the outcome.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I), VERMONT: The Green Party has the legal right. Republicans have requested, I think the governor of North Carolina right now is thinking about doing a recount. That's a legal right. They do it. [00:25:02] I don't think that Hillary Clinton who got two million more votes than Mr. Trump in the popular election thinks that it's going to transform the election. But do people have the legal right to do it? Yes, we do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ALLEN: Well, Trump's inner circle is split over his consideration of Mitt Romney for secretary of state. Romney has, as you know, sharply criticized Trump in the past calling him a phony and a fraud. One of Trump's top advisers says his supporters feel betrayed that Romney might now end up with the top post in Trump's cabinet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KELLYANNE CONWAY, TRUMP SENIOR ADVISER: I know there are other candidates being considered, apart from the ones that that are just being covered more commonly in the media but apart from that Governor Romney in the last four years, has he been around the globe doing something on behalf of the United States of which we're unaware?

I'm all for party unity but I'm not sure that we have to pay for that with the secretary of state position. But again let me repeat, what Donald Trump decides, Kellyanne Conway and everybody else will respect. It's just the backlash from the grassroots -- I'm hearing from people who say, hey my parents died penniless but I gave $216 to Donald Trump's campaign and I would feel betrayed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

VANIER: The Politico Web site reports that Vice President-Elect Mike Pence is pushing for the Romney appointment but Conway and others want former New York Mayor, Rudy Giuliani to be secretary of state.

The Syrian regime has made new gains against rebels in Eastern Aleppo.

ALLEN: The latest on a potentially game-changing government offensive. That's coming up here on CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:30:06] VANIER: And welcome back to our viewers around the world. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Cyril Vanier.

ALLEN: And I am Natalie Allen. Here are the top stories we're following this hour.

Cubans are remembering former leader Fidel Castro this week. 21 gun salutes will fire in Havana and Santiago to Cuba on Monday, and again next Sunday. Castro's ashes will begin a ceremonial through the country on Wednesday retracing in reverse the route Castro and his rebels took to seek power in 1959.

VANIER: French conservatives have chosen Francois Fillon to lead their party in next year's presidential election. His opponent Alain Juppe conceded defeat after losing Sunday's primary run off. Fillon could face the leader of the far right National Front Party Marine Le Pen in the final round of the presidential vote next year.

ALLEN: A tide could be turning in Syria's long civil war. Regime forces over the weekend broke through rebel lines and pushed into two neighborhoods in Eastern Aleppo. Government troops have not held a significant part of the city's east in more than four years.

VANIER: And currently Syrian state media is reporting that government troops are in full control of those neighborhoods. However, activists and residents in Aleppo say that only parts of the neighborhoods are in regime hands.

ALLEN: Senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen has more for us from London.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): These are arguably some of the most significant gains that the Syrian government military forces have made over the past five years that the civil war has been going on.

Now eastern Aleppo, for both the Syrian government as well as the opposition is one of the main battle grounds in the civil war. It's the last urban stronghold where the rebels actually still hold a significant amount of territory and therefore the rebels want to defend it almost at all costs. And, of course, the Syrian government and its allied forces that include Hezbollah, also include Iraqi Shia fighters and Iranians, they want to take it almost at all cost.

And that's why you've seen a major bombing campaign happening on the eastern district of Aleppo. Some 46 people killed in Aleppo and the surrounding areas on Saturday alone. You also have artillery shelling as well, which obviously leads to a dire situation for the civilians that are still trapped inside that area.

The United Nations believes that up to 250,000 people might still be trapped inside eastern Aleppo and UNICEF says 100,000 of those could very well be children. Of course for them more than for any of the others trapped in there, the situation is very much catastrophic. Of course, they can't go out and play. Of course, they can't go to school. Apparently in some cases people have set up playgrounds in basements to try and allow these children to have at least a little bit of respite from the civil war.

At the same time, food is running low. Water is running low. Medical supplies are in very short supply as well, as the U.N. says there's many people who have been wounded. Many people with medical conditions who can't get any treatment and also who can't get out to get any sort of treatment as well. So a very difficult situation. But for the Syrian government forces, taking this one district in Eastern Aleppo and also being able to enter and take parts of another district, that is a key military victory.

Some of those places have been held by the rebels since July of 2012 and the Syrian government forces haven't been able to get in there. So now it seems as though they're making progress and many people that we've been speaking to say they're quite surprised at how fast that progress seems to be going.

So at this point in time, it looks as though the tide really seems to be turning in favor of Syrian government forces, not just in the battle of Aleppo, but generally in Syria's civil war.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, London.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

VANIER: We're with Andrew Tabler, who joins us from Washington via Skype. He's the author of the book "In the Lion's Den," an eyewitness account of Washington's battle with Syria.

Mr. Tabler, is this the end game for rebels in Aleppo.

ANDREW TABLER, AUTHOR, IN THE LION'S DEN: It's not necessarily the end game, but it's -- this is expected. The rebels had been surrounded for several months. They've been squeezed by the Assad regime who has brought in Shia militia from all over the Middle East combine with Russian airpower. And they are squeezing their pocket.

This is the regime's answer to the revolution. They're called -- the regime calls them cease-fires. What they are know internationally is siege and starve tactics, and they're being used by the regime to squeeze and starve this pocket in East Aleppo, where roughly a quarter of a million Syrians are residing.

VANIER: Yes, siege and starve tactics. Tell us about the civilians, what we know and what could happen.

TABLER: Food is rapidly running out. We expect that they are not going to be re-supplied, absent some sort of miraculous offensive by the rebels to break the siege, which they have tried over the last few months.

We're going to see a lot of Syrians in that pocket trying to make a decision, a hard decision about whether to stay or whether to go. It's dire times to the revolution, which entered Aleppo in 2012 and thought that they were taking over Syria's largest city.

VANIER: What will be left of the anti-Assad groups? And I know that they're not a homogenous coalition if they do lose their foothold in Aleppo.

TABLER: So you have a combination of local militia, some (INAUDIBLE) organizations and then some Jihadist organizations, which are closer to the Jabhat Faith al-Sham, the Al Qaeda affiliate.

As Russian bombardment has continued over the last year with the regime, Shia militia have come in. Many of those in the opposition have gone over to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, the al Qaeda affiliate, thinking that they would support the revolution while no one else would. And we're in this very interesting situation where Russia and Iran are helping the Assad regime squeeze this area and violate humanitarian law, while extremists who are opposed to western interests are those that are trying to help the rebels and to liberate those areas and to relief those areas of humanitarian strangulation.

VANIER: And, by the way, you mentioned Russia and Iran, but Russia is saying that its warplanes are not participating in the war effort in Aleppo. They're not bombing Aleppo. That's what they're saying.

TABLER: Well, of course, these things bear greater scrutiny, but the regime still carries out airstrikes on those areas. And the local forces are indeed, even by their own advertisements and postings online are backed up by Shia militia from Iraq, Lebanon with Lebanese, Hezbollah and Afghanistan.

So, you know, it's hard to deny that this arrangement of forces is the one that's surrounding this pocket of rebel-held territory from East Aleppo.

VANIER: Andrew Tabler joining us from Washington. Thank you very much. We appreciate your insights. Thanks a lot.

TABLER: My pleasure.

ALLEN: As the war continues on in Aleppo, children are of course being caught up in the conflict. We've reported about that quite often.

VANIER: And one little girl in Eastern Aleppo and Eastern Aleppo has been tweeting about the bloodshed with the help of her mother.

7-year-old made Bana made headlines last week for a chain of tweets to the author J.K. Rowling. The "Harry Potter" when she learned about her, was a fan, she sent her e-books of the series and we reported on that. However, this little girl still cannot escape the horrors of daily life in Aleppo.

ALLEN: She tweeted this on Sunday. "Tonight, we have no house, it's bombed, and I got in rubble. I saw death and I almost died." Bana.

Hope for her and so many of the children there in Aleppo. Their lives had just been ravage.

VANIER: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ALLEN: 'Tis the holiday shopping season. It's official. And shoppers will be on the look out for more bargains online on cyber Monday.

VARNIER: Yes. And the whole is that you actually shop from the comfort of your own home. However, if you feel that you're not actually getting, you know, the O shopping experience or not enough of it, well, don't worry because Alibaba, the Chinese Amazon has got you covered with virtual reality shopping.

Andrew Stevens checked it out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Where did you come from?

ANDREW STEVENS, CNN ASIA PACIFIC EDITOR (voice-over): I've come to do some shopping in the big Apple and I'm getting the whole experience. A ride in a pink Cadillac through the streets of New York.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi, and welcome to Macy's.

STEVENS: To an iconic store, Macy's on 34th street. In fact, you've probably guessed by now, I'm not.

(on-camera): I'm actually a few thousand miles away in Southern china testing Alibaba's new virtual reality online shopping service. It's pretty simple really. You get the right headset, you pop your mobile phone in, get the right app, close it up and go online shopping.

You can see what you want, buy it and within a few days, the real thing will be at your doorstep. Let's show you how.

(voice-over): It starts inside a virtual home, the blue dot at the center of your screen is your guide. Line it up on one of the wall posters showing what stores you can access and off you go.

Just aim the blue dot at what you'd like and up pops the details and price. Focus on the buy sign and the deal is done. Real money will then be extracted from your Alibaba payment system and delivery is a few days later.

Ali calls this program Buy+. It still in trial stages, but there seems to be plenty of interest. When Ali went live with Buy+ for ten days earlier this month, 8 million people around China tried it out. They were buying but Ali won't say how much.

(On-camera): Remember, this was only launched at the beginning of the month so it's still a little bit clunky, but in the words of Alibaba founder Jack Ma, it's all about enhancing the shopping experience online and certainly this is an experience.

Andrew Stevens, CNN, Shenzhen, China.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ALLEN: Pretty cool.

VANIER: Yes, I like the purse.

(LAUGHTER)

ALLEN: You can get it for me. I'd rather just stay online, though. I don't really want to go in the store.

VANIER: But the whole point is you don't go to the store. That's the whole point.

ALLEN: We'll see how it goes. Thanks for watching this hour. I'm Natalie Allen. And Cyril Vanier. "World Sport" is up next. We're back after this.

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