Spring Festival expected to stimulate consumption boom

The upcoming Spring Festival is expected to stimulate a consumption boom after the optimized COVID-19 measures in different parts of China, the 21st Century News reported on Thursday.

Consumption of food, tobacco, alcohol, daily necessities and services will be further boosted as more people will return home to visit their relatives and friends during the Spring Festival, the most important festival for Chinese people, similar to Christmas for the Westerners.

The service consumption of middle and high income groups will be greatly boosted during this year's Spring Festival, which runs from Jan 21 and 27.

During this period of time, more people will take a self-driving tour of surrounding areas, travel to Hainan, ski and enjoy the hot springs, the report said.

Offline consumption has resumed after Beijing declared that the epidemic had passed its peak of infection in early January of this year.

Meanwhile, many places including Henan, Zhejiang, Chongqing and Sichuan have made the same declaration, a piece of good news for the recovery of consumption.

From Jan 3 to 6, the subway ridership levels in major Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chongqing, Chengdu and Wuhan rose close to the ridership levels seen in the first half of 2022, according to MetroDB.org.

About 2.1 billion trips are expected to be made during the 2023 Spring Festival travel rush, up 99.5 percent from the same period last year, Xu Chengguang, vice-minister of transport, said at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on Jan 6.

The average daily number of civil aviation passenger flights is expected to reach 11,000 during the Spring Festival travel rush in 2023, recovering to 73 percent of the level in 2019, according to Civil Aviation Administration.

From Dec 19 to 25, 2022, the number of restaurant reservations in Beijing increased by 218 percent compared with last week, according to data from Meituan.

In addition, pre-prepared dishes have become a popular category in the food industry on JD Supermarket while people prepare for the festival, the report said.