China's eight-day Golden Week holiday
has reflected the country's impressive recovery and its economic bounce
back from the COVID-19 epidemic, with more than half a billion people on
the move for a long-awaited vacation and factories stepping up
production to complete new orders. Amid
regular epidemic control, the peak season of tourism-driven consumption
boom for National Day celebration that coincides with the traditional
Mid-Autumn Festival this year was also a test field for China's new
economic development pattern of "dual circulation." As
a pivotal part of the "dual circulation" development pattern floated by
China's top leadership in May that encourages domestic and overseas
markets to reinforce each other, the country's enormous market and
expanding domestic demand during the holiday has gathered sound momentum
for China's economy to further perk up. The
total number of domestic tourists nationwide is previously expected to
reach 550 million during the holiday, while statistics from the Ministry
of Culture and Tourism showed that a sizable 618 million domestic
tourist visits were made in the first seven days, generating overall
tourism revenue of 454 billion yuan (about 66.9 billion U.S. dollars). In
Wuhan, the heroic city once hard hit by coronavirus but has restored
its vigor, visitors ambled by the Yellow Crane Tower as the historic
building launched night tours for the first time since its opening to
the public in 1985 after reconstruction. The landmark topped the
"country's hottest scenic spots" rankings by China's largest online
travel agency Trip.com Group. "The
Wuhan Yangtze River Bridge is the same as usual, so is the roaring
Yangtze flowing eastward," Wang Yu, a tourist from Hubei's Enshi City,
said while enjoying a distant view on top of the tower. "What's
different is the heavy traffic on the bridge and the passing cargo
ships on the river. Wuhan returns to life!" Wang said. Top
scenic sites in pral China's Hubei Province received over 2.07
million visitors in the first seven days of the holiday, according to
the provincial culture and tourism department, with 30 key scenic sites
raking in 205 million yuan from Oct. 1 to Oct. 7. In
Beijing, more than 90,000 people, standing in the drizzling autumn
rain, gathered at Tian'anmen Square on Oct. 1 and burst into cheers as
the five-starred red flag was hoisted to the top of the flagpole,
accompanied by the national anthem. According
to the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage, some 40
museums in the city have offered more than 100 special cultural
activities for the holiday, with 13 museums extending opening hours or
providing night-time activities on Oct. 1, on which the Mid-Autumn
Festival fell. The Palace Museum,
also known as the 600-year-old Forbidden City, raised for the third time
its daily visitor cap up to 30,000 since it partially reopened from May
1. Unlike in previous years, some
museums have moved part of their activities online while maintaining
on-site visits to avoid crowd gathering during this year's Golden Week,
said Li Yang with the administration. The
Beijing Road pedestrian street in the southern city of Guangzhou, after
two years of modification, took on a new look with full 5G coverage and
attracted over 4 million visitors during the holiday, with a sales
turnover of more than 600 million yuan, up 160 perp year on year. In
pral China's Hunan Province, the temperature plunge did not restrain
visitors' passion for Zhangjiajie, a UNESCO World Heritage Site known
for its forest parks. The picturesque tourist spot received 1.8 million
visitors in the first five days of the holiday, with total tourism
revenue exceeding 1.3 billion yuan. "I
made travel plans and booked the tickets before setting out," said Li
Lin from Beijing who visited the Wulingyuan scenic area in Zhangjiajie. She
was very much impressed by the smart face-scanning quick pass,
noise-free wireless audio guide, clean and tidy tourist trails, as well
as zero-contact customer services. "The distinctive scenery, good
tourism facilities and services have offered me a great travel
experience." Chinese card payment
giant China UnionPay saw its online payments go up by 9.6 perp year
on year to 921.5 billion yuan during the first three days of the
holiday, with payments over its network exceeding 330 billion yuan on
Oct. 1, an increase of 15.5 perp over the same day of last year. Data
from Alibaba's travel agency Fliggy showed that stimulated by the
company's 10-billion-yuan subsidy campaign and coupons introduced by
local governments to revive tourism, hotel bookings nationwide surged by
more than 50 perp year on year during the holiday, while both air
ticket and scenic spot bookings rose by 16 perp year on year. "In
any year, the outlay of the weeklong holiday is a closely watched
barometer of the country's economic health," the New York Times
reported, noting that this year's holiday offered "the clearest measure
yet of China's recovery from the pandemic." The
huge consumption potential during the Golden Week will not only
accelerate the recovery of China's domestic economy but also drive
imports and investment from other countries, as the booming "holiday
economy" fuels internal circulation and promotes external circulation at
the meantime, offering a strong boost to global trade and the world
economy. Gu Qingyang, an associate
professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National
University of Singapore, noted that holiday consumption will help boost
the service sector and promote more balanced development between other
industries that bore the brunt of the epidemic. As
transportation, tourism and other sectors witnessed unleashed domestic
demand during the holiday, production and trade have also bounced with
remarkable speed. With less than 500
days to go, construction of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics venues has
entered the home stretch, with over 10,000 workers choosing to remain
employed during the vacation. Construction
workers are focusing on interior decorations and making ice at the
National Speed Skating Oval, locally known as the "Ice Ribbon," which
boasts the most extensive full ice design in Asia, with an ice surface
area of 12,000 square meters. Song
Jiafeng, executive deputy general manager of the National Speed Skating
Oval, has spent the past three National Day holidays staying on
position. "On every National Day we
watch the live broadcast of the flag-raising ceremony at Tian'anmen
Square, drawing strength to better devote ourselves to the construction
work," Song said. Workers of the
Guangzhou Lianrou Machinery and Equipment Co., Ltd., a mattress machine
and spring mattress manufacturer in the Yunpu industrial area in
Guangzhou, have spent their holiday working extra shifts for new orders. "It
has been our busiest National Day holiday, our confirmed orders are
scheduled until next February," said Tan Zhiming, vice chairman of the
company. With 60 perp of its
products sold overseas, Lianrou once saw its production capacity drop by
70 perp during the epidemic. The company's orders started to pick up
in May, with orders in August and September doubled year on year. China's
economic recovery continued to gather steam with improving major
economic indicators including retail sales of consumer goods, industrial
output, the export of goods and the purchasing managers' index for the
manufacturing sector. The country has become the only major economy
projected by the World Bank to achieve positive growth in 2020. The
increase in China's domestic consumption will beef up global demand
through international trade, thus stimulate world economic recovery, Gu
said.
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