Beijing: The May Day holiday has once again demonstrated China’s rapid economic recovery, with an explosive spending spree lifting many sectors across the country to pre-epidemic levels. Such strong momentum has not only injected new vitality into the Chinese economy but also strengthened the country’s confidence and ability to deal with rising challenges at home and abroad.
During the holiday, 265 million passenger trips were expected to be made, up 120.1 percent year-on-year and rising close to the number in 2019 before the COVID-19 pandemic. That includes 106 million passenger trips on the country’s railway system, up 0.8 percent from the pre-pandemic level in 2019.
The travel rush also led to a consumption boom in many sectors, including tourism, dining, retailing and other leisure activities. On the first two days alone, transaction volume on China UnionPay network reached 754.3 billion yuan ($116.54 billion), an increase of 5.5 percent compared with the same period last year and up 6.9 percent from the 2019 level.
The holiday spending spree may serve as a microcosm of China’s economic resilience and post-epidemic consumption recovery, which observers generally attributed to the “retaliatory spending” after the successful control of the resurgence of the coronavirus.
By comparison, much of the world is still stumbling through pandemic woes, with uneven recovery pace amid global anti-epidemic efforts.
Some economies, after recording sharp declines last year, are bound to see strong rebound this year, while others like India may still face an extremely uncertain recovery trajectory as their domestic epidemic situation worsened. – Agencies
