Golden Week shows resilience and confidence of China's economy
By WU YIXUE | China Daily | Updated: 2024-10-08 07:26
Rosy economic data and people's increased spending during the just-concluded National Day holiday highlight China's huge economic potential and overall resilience.
Statistics show that in the first five days of the weeklong holiday, nearly 1.46 billion travels had been made across the country, with a significant year-on-year increase in ticket sales at major scenic spots. Hong Kong welcomed nearly 1 million visitors from the Chinese mainland in the first five days of the holiday, a 35 percent rise over the same period last year. At movie theaters, as of 19:30 on the sixth day of the holiday, the total box office collection had exceeded 2 billion yuan ($284 million). At the same time, the real estate market across China saw hot sales, with sales in first-tier cities particularly seeing a drastic surge.
Such rosy consumption statistics are proof of the vitality of the Chinese economy, and once again prove that the fundamentals of China's economy are solid, its economic resilience strong, and the potential of its broad market huge.
In fact, the huge consumption potential became apparent even before the National Day holiday. On Sept 24, the authorities rolled out a number of policies, including the reduction of commercial banks' reserve requirement ratio, interest rate cuts, and the reduction of mortgage rates for homebuyers. Two days later, the central authorities made specific arrangements on how to accelerate the countercyclical adjustment of fiscal and monetary policies, help enterprises tide over difficulties, and improve people's livelihoods. As a result, on Sept 30, a day before the National Day holiday, China's A-share market saw a huge surge, with turnover exceeding 2.6 trillion yuan.
The same optimism and signs of recovery and prosperity were seen in ordinary residents' spending trends, be it in travel, shopping, watching movies and home-buying. Moreover, even local governments did not sit idle during the National Day holiday, introducing various policies to boost consumption. Not long ago, Goldman Sachs, UBS, Morgan Stanley and other foreign institutions upgraded their rating for Chinese stocks, casting a vote of confidence in the Chinese economy.
Given that some new situations and problems have emerged in China's economic operation, it is necessary to maintain policy consistency to help China's economy tide over the difficulties. The recent intensive introduction of policies will help stabilize China's economic growth and expectations. The country still has sufficient fiscal, monetary and financial policy space, and its future macro policy is expected to intensify, further consolidating the foundations of economic recovery.