China’s consumption engine fully back to rolling, May Day holiday data shows
China’s consumption engine has completely recovered to post-pandemic levels, as shown by surging spending on items from travel products to duty-free goods during the 2021 May Day holidays, which witnessed the country’s largest population movement after last year’s National Day holidays.
In Haikou, a city in South China’s Hainan Province, Chinese people made 65,400 purchases amounting to 485 million yuan ($75 million) on offshore duty-free goods from Saturday to Monday, the first three days of the May Day holidays, up 215.24 percent year-on-year.
In Wuhan, the city at the heart of the initial coronavirus outbreak in China, more than 140,000 passengers trips were recorded at Wuhan Railway Station on Saturday. Many hotels were booked out days or even weeks ahead of the holidays.
It was a similar situation in Shanghai, where tourists paid about 4.66 million visits to about 170 tourism sites, up 166 percent from the level in 2020 and 6 percent from that in 2019.
On average, every Chinese tourist spent about 1,713 yuan on tourism and other items during this year’s May Day holidays, setting a record among the same period in recent years, data sent by Chinese tourism site qunar.com to the Global Times showed.
These statistics reveal a steady yet robust recovery of China’s consumption market as the country’s services sector underwent an orderly climb after the unexpected coronavirus-triggered economic ebbs in early 2019, although pandemic threats and economic uncertainties still linger.
During the five-day May Day holidays, 113.23 billion yuan flowed into China’s tourism industries, up 138.1 percent year-on-year and about 77 percent of that of pre-epidemic levels, according to data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. A total of 230 million domestic trips were made over the five days, compared with 637 million trips during the eight-day Golden Week holiday last year which combined the National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival.
From Saturday to Tuesday, China’s rail passenger flow rose by about 23 percent compared with the first three days of the 2020 National Day holidays, calculated the Global Times based on data provided by China Railway.
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With an in-depth understanding of Shanghai capital markets, Declan Hahn specializes in helping companies and people create Shanghai investment strategies.