BEIJING: Chinese residents have opted for new ways to celebrate this year’s National Day holiday amid COVID-19 prevention and control efforts, injecting further impetus into the world’s second largest economy.
The country’s fight against the virus is ongoing and related measures remain in place, but new consumption patterns in the shopping, tourism and culture sectors that have emerged during the holiday show that consumer demand has not been dampened, but diversified.
Both online and offline shopping have gained steam during the National Day holiday, with sales in the “consumption-upgrade” sector soaring.
Hubei resident Chen Jianglian has traveled to south China’s island province of Hainan for the holiday, in order to shop at the duty-free mall in Haikou, Hainan’s capital city. Chen was attracted to the province by the variety of products available at friendly prices.
Tax-free shopping sales on the first day of the weeklong holiday reached 171 million yuan (about 26.37 million U.S. dollars), surging 122 percent from a year earlier, according to the local customs bureau in Haikou.
Boosted by strong online shopping demand, the transaction value of floor-mopping robots increased fourfold and the transaction value of action cameras almost doubled in places such as Beijing and Shanghai, data from online shopping giant JD.com shows.
– The Daily Mail-People’s Daily News exchange item
