Chinese consumers show strong spending power during Spring Festival

Chinese consumers have again shown their huge spending power, taking advantage of the country's planned support package for spurring tourism, ensuring holiday delivery, and encouraging cultural fairs to boost holiday spending.

Experts say the eight-day holiday is expected to become an "unprecedented" peak season for consumption and that the bustling start to the Year of the Dragon will pave the way for economic development throughout the new year despite emerging headwinds.

Traveling: Bouncing back to 2019 levels

Official data shows that China has registered over 3.5 billion passenger trips during the first 17 days of this year's Spring Festival travel rush, which began on January 26, and the number is expected to reach 9 billion during the ongoing travel rush, likely hitting a new high.

Traditionally, Chinese people tended to stay home with their family members for the Spring Festival. But many families are now opting to travel during the holiday, attracted by cultural activities, such as lantern shows, flower markets and temple fairs around the country, or traveling overseas.

Fliggy, a leading online travel platform, shows that the number of domestic travel reservations during the Spring Festival has increased significantly, and holiday tourism has exceeded that of 2019. Meanwhile, the number of outbound travel bookings rose more than 15-fold compared with the same period last year, close to the level of 2019.

Data from Ctrip Travel also shows that many scenic spots across the country began to embrace swarms of tourists on the first day of the Spring Festival. For instance, ticket orders for scenic spots in Hebei, Henan, Shandong, and Shanxi provinces increased more than 15-fold. Meanwhile, ticket bookings for Luoyang, an ancient city in central China's Henan Province, increased 35-fold year-on-year.

Facing the tourism frenzy, the management department of many scenic spots had to issue announcements urging people to book tickets in advance, pay attention to traffic restriction measures and avoid peak seasons.

"I had planned to see the pandas at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding but had to abandon the idea since we didn't book in advance and the ticket had sold out on the day," a white-collar worker based in Beijing surnamed Gu told CGTN on Monday. 

Another female tourist surnamed Wan told CGTN that she and her family went to South Korea to celebrate the Spring Festival because her family members felt it was a good time to travel abroad with the COVID-19 pandemic being over.

Families like the Wans are not alone, as China's outbound tourism is showing a vigorous upward tide. A recent Oxford Economics report forecasts the number of international outbound trips taken by Chinese travelers in 2024 will roughly double relative to 2023, bouncing back to nearly 80 percent of 2019 volumes. And about 250,000 Chinese tourists are expected to visit Thailand during this year's Spring Festival holiday, three times more than in 2023, according to Chanapan Kaewklachaiyawuth, vice president of the Thai Chinese Tourism Alliance Association.

Spending: New trends emerging

In addition to the unparalleled travel surge, Chinese people are also squeezing into theaters, various fairs and markets with long shopping lists.

China's film market has shown robust performance during the holiday, with the box office, including presold tickets, from Saturday to Tuesday at noon soaring past 4 billion yuan ($556 million). According to film tracking site Maoyan, the total revenue of China's box office has reached 6.4 billion yuan ($890 million) as of Monday, surpassing that of North America. The figure places China as the world's largest movie market in 2024 for the time being.

Chinese New Year's Eve dinner also gained more popularity. Data from the e-commerce platform Meituan showed that as of January 21, New Year's Eve reservations at restaurants had increased more than three-fold compared with 2023, and some major restaurants in first-tier cities were open for dinner for the full 24 hours on New Year's Eve.

To further boost consumption, the country initiated a national online Spring Festival shopping season this year. It started on January 18 and will last until February 17. The first major online activity of the new year, the shopping season has integrated online promotion activities from various offline shops and e-commerce platforms.

Several e-commerce platforms have launched "Non-stop Shopping" campaigns for the holiday, with courier companies providing uninterrupted services, ensuring smooth shopping throughout the holiday period.

JD Logistics, China's first courier company to deliver goods during the Spring Festival in 2013, announced that people can place orders and receive goods in more than 2,000 districts, counties and cities even on New Year's Eve. It also claimed it could deliver fresh beef and mutton from northwestern China's Ningxia, where stock farming is developed, to many east and south China's provinces in just one day.

SF Express, another leading courier company, invested in two more cargo planes and 30 cold storages, opened 14 cold chain lines and more than 250 transport lines to guarantee all fresh products, like beef and mutton, can be delivered to 52 key cities in the country. 

New consumption forms have also emerged, with the sales volume of goods featuring the Year of the Dragon theme  increasing significantly.

According to data from Vipshop, China's major online discount retailer, the sales volume of China-chic clothing featuring the Year of the Dragon theme had increased by 120 percent in the first week after the start of the shopping season compared with the previous week. Meanwhile, the sales volume of sports sweaters with a Year of the Dragon theme surged more than three-fold month-on-month.

"As people get rich, some of them begin to pay attention to cultural consumption. China-chic clothing has become a 'must-buy' in their New Year shopping list," said Wen Jie, a clothing businessman. Despite costing more than 1,000 yuan, a dress with a dragon motif in her store became a hit among clients.

As a new wave of consumption fervor sweeps the nation, the world's second-largest economy is gathering momentum for an accelerated recovery in 2024.