Christmas madness reveals strong purchasing power

The Chinese showed strong purchasing power during the Mid-Autumn Festival, with many sectors such as tourism and postal services seeing rapid growth during the three-day holiday.

The latest data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism shows that about 107 million people visited domestic tourist sites during the holiday season, up 6.3 percent from 2019 — before the COVID-19 epidemic.

The celebration lasted for three days, from Sunday to Tuesday, and was one of the four most important traditional holidays in China, the other three being the Spring Festival, Tomb-Sweeping Day and the Dragon Boat Festival.

Families are organising a variety of festivities, including baking and eating mooncakes, solving lantern puzzles and viewing the full moon, to provide entertainment during the festival, which ended on Tuesday.

Among the industries closely linked to people’s livelihoods, tourism is posting excellent results, although Shanghai was hit by Typhoon Bebinca on Monday, which disrupted the travel plans of some tourists.

Traveler spending totaled more than 51 billion yuan ($7.19 billion), up 8 percent from 2019, when the holiday was celebrated in mid-September. Last year, the holiday coincided with a national holiday.

Travelers opted for short-haul or overnight trips, given the shorter duration of the holiday and the fact that the main activity of the celebration is enjoying the full moon with loved ones. East China’s Fujian province reported that the number of tourists visiting its scenic spots overnight was about 2.06 million during the holiday, up 19.5 percent from 2019.

The ministry said that places with a strong presence of Chinese culture and where various folkloric entertainment events, such as lantern fairs and Chinese opera performances, have become a “travel craze” in the country.

The inbound and outbound tourism market is no worse than the domestic market by any measure. The National Immigration Administration said Wednesday that mainland border control offices recorded about 5.25 million entries and exits of both Chinese and foreigners during the three-day holiday, up 18.6 percent from a year earlier.

Of these, mainland Chinese residents recorded about 2.63 million entries and exits, up 15.1 percent year-on-year, while the number of foreigners rose 62.2 percent year-on-year to 554,000. Residents of the Hong Kong and Macau SARs and Taiwan recorded a combined 2.07 million entries and exits during the holiday period, up 7.3 percent year-on-year.

Residents’ strong purchasing power also spilled over into other sectors during the holiday. Beijing, one of the country’s largest cities with a dense population and strong consumption force, recorded a sales volume of about 4.7 billion yuan during the holiday, including shopping malls, supermarkets, restaurants and online sales, China Central Television reported, citing data from the Beijing Municipal Commerce Bureau.

The postal and courier industry also saw an increase in parcel deliveries in China during the holiday season.

China’s State Post Office said Wednesday that courier companies collected about 1.31 billion parcels during this year’s three-day festival, a 35.4 percent increase in daily collections compared with last year’s Mid-Autumn Festival. Deliveries, meanwhile, rose to about 1.407 billion parcels, reflecting a remarkable 45.7 percent year-on-year increase.

Luo Wangshu AND Yang Zekun contributed to the creation of this story.