A former Chinese millionaire’s last possession to be auctioned has been broken – a bottle of Sprite

A court’s actions in China, which auctioned off a bottle of soft drink as the last remaining possession of a bankrupt millionaire, have sparked an online debate about the waste of judicial resources.

The auction was conducted by the Dafeng District People’s Court in Yancheng, southeast China’s Jiangsu Province.

A bottle of Sprite, which normally costs 6 yuan (9 US cents) in stores, was auctioned with a starting bid of 4.2 yuan, which was increased in increments of 0.08 yuan.

The court ordered that the buyer had to pick up the item in person because shipping was not possible.

Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post, hosted the auction on its Alibaba Judicial Auction Platform.

According to the Yangtse Evening Post, the owner of the bottle of soft drink was associated with two companies, a biotechnology company and a marine food company, which had registered capital of five million yuan (US$713,000) and US$1.725 million, respectively.