Booming holiday consumption promises stable start for economy

The Spring Festival holiday has unleashed the strong vitality and huge potential of China's consumer market, contributing to a stable start for the Chinese economy in 2025. Driven by the consumer goods trade-in programs, the consumption of household appliances and other products has been on the rise.

Data from the National Development and Reform Commission on Feb 10 showed that during the Spring Festival holiday, the sales volume of products belonging to the trade-in programs, such as new cars and home appliances nationwide reached 8.6 million units (sets), with sales exceeding 31 billion yuan ($4.24 billion), the Securities Times reported on Wednesday.

Service consumption has also unleashed the potential of domestic demand. Data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism shows that during the eight-day Spring Festival holiday, the business volume of key-monitored catering enterprises increased by 6.2 percent year-on-year. The total domestic tourism spending reached 677 billion yuan, a year-on-year rise of 7.0 percent, and the number of domestic trips was 500 million, a year-on-year increase of 5.9 percent.

According to research by China Industry Online, in February 2025, the production schedules of the three major white goods, namely air conditioners, refrigerators and washing machines were up 35.6 percent, 29.2 percent and 21.3 percent yearly, respectively.

Feng Lin, director of the Research and Development Department of Golden Credit Rating, analyzed that the scale of support funds for the trade-in for new of durable consumer goods in 2025 will reach about 300 billion yuan.

In the later stage, there is a possibility of large-scale issuance of consumer vouchers and consumption subsidies nationwide, and the scope of consumption promotion may be expanded from durable consumer goods to general consumer goods and service consumption.