Holiday consumption reflects latest trends of economic life

Economists see the National Day holiday in China less as a time for rest than a natural experiment: a mass migration of hundreds of millions of people, a surge in spending, and a live readout of consumer confidence.

According to Qunar, a travel platform, during this year's Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, Sept 25-27, and National Day holiday, Oct 1-7, flight bookings for distances over 2,000 kilometers rose by more than 40 percent year-on-year. Ten-day or longer tours accounted for 26 percent of bookings on Tuniu, another platform. In a nutshell, people traveled longer and farther. This is not the behavior of an economy powered by bargain hunting.

The destinations are changing too. On Qunar's list of the 10 most popular attractions, the top three were lesser-known places. On Fliggy, another travel platform, traveler interest in villages and natural scenery jumped by nearly 50 percent year-on-year.

As the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Long March draws near, former revolutionary bases are drawing visitors interested in China's modern history. In Yan'an, Shaanxi province, the first day of the National Day holiday saw a 20 percent year-on-year surge in visitor numbers.

Thanks to years of investment in roads, railways and rural vitalization, villages, museums and intangible cultural-heritage sites are emerging as alternatives to crowded landmarks. China's comprehensive transport network now exceeds 6 million kilometers. On Oct 1 alone, the national railway carried 25.2 million passengers, a single-day record; across the first three days, cross-regional passenger movements exceeded 300 million a day.

Then there is the immersive economy. In Tianjin, playwright Cao Yu's Sunrise was staged on the very street where it is set; the surrounding commercial district drew 600,000 visitors a day. In Chengdu, robots performed dances inspired by local opera's face-changing art and used digital technology to recreate tanghua, a traditional form of sugar painting.

Cultural consumption is thriving too. After a five-day streak in which daily box-office revenue topped 100 million yuan ($14.91 million), total National Day holiday ticket sales surpassed 900 million yuan.

The same is true of the green transition. New energy vehicles are becoming fixtures on holiday roads, while China continues to expand charging infrastructure. Nearly 11,000 new high-power charging facilities were added at expressway service areas from January to August, bringing the national total to about 89,000.

The government is playing its part. The fourth batch of trade-in subsidies — 62.5 billion yuan in ultra-long special treasury bonds — was released just before the holiday. In the first three days of the National Day holiday, trade-in programs drove 19.6 billion yuan in sales, benefiting 3.48 million consumers.

Even the countryside is being pulled into this process. Roads, public services and digital connectivity have made villages more accessible, while rural tourism is increasingly packaged around art, food, ecology and local culture. Some county destinations have seen homestay bookings more than double. Yet the challenge is that footfall does not always translate into equally strong spending.

Perhaps the most striking shift is the influx of foreign visitors. China's border crossings are expected to see about 2.15 million passenger trips a day on average during the National Day holiday, according to the National Immigration Administration.

That growing international interest is also showing up in spending. Overseas visitors spent 263.6 billion yuan in China in the first seven months of 2026, up 27.8 percent year-on-year, according to China's Commerce Ministry.

China is promoting common prosperity as well as mutual understanding. That not only matters economically, but also culturally. A country is easier to understand when experienced rather than merely described.

The country's vast domestic market is being reshaped by infrastructure, digitalization, new-energy technology, cultural production and the green transition.

Chinese consumers are becoming more demanding, more experience-oriented and more willing to travel far. However, the story is not simply how much China spent. It is what consumers wanted to buy: more experiences, more convenience, more mobility and, increasingly, more of China itself. The holiday lasts for days. The economic transition it reveals will last far longer.