Status Report on China's Golden Weeks Public Holidays

Once again, and as announced in our post of April 11, China recently extended its 3-day May Day public holiday, for 2007, to an extended 7-day period, from May 1 to May 7, 2007. These full weeks of public holidays, resulting from completing each of China's three, 3-day, public holidays (Chinese New Year, May Day, and National Day) into full weeks of public holidays, are called "Golden Weeks", and are meant to stimulate domestic spending, through increased travel. As such, the future of Golden Weeks is the object of much semi-official debate in the Chinese media, in particular in the days that lead up to, and follow each occurrence of a Golden Week. In this status report, we review the Chinese news media commentary related to this most recent Golden Week to try to anticipate on the future of this practice.

Background on Golden Weeks Public Holidays in China

Golden Weeks were first initiated on the occasion of the 1999 National Day public holiday (officially set for October 1 to October 3, annually). At the time, the Chinese government felt that it was a way to stimulate the domestic economy to counterbalance the dependence of the Chinese economy on the outside world, be it from exports of Chinese produced goods, or the import of foreign goods to satisfy China's growing number of affluent city-dwellers. It was felt that these week-long public holidays would encourage people who often were working far from their families to travel back to visit those families. As such, most reports, indicate that the process has been an economic success.

However, with the passing of each Golden Week public holiday, there are voices in the Chinese news media, to decry them and suggest alternatives. Some of the criticism is that it leads to a lower work ethic, as the additional 2 days that people are supposed to work, ahead of each the Golden Week, in compensation, are not always taken, particularly in the white-collar and government sectors. Some of the criticisms are that it creates a logistic nightmare as 100-200 million Chinese all go on holidays at the same time. Others decry that traditional Chinese festivals (such as Tomb Sweeping Day and The Mid-Autumn Festival) are being ignored in favor of mammoth holidays that have little to do with Chinese tradition.

As the Chinese media is not known for propagating views contrary to the wishes of the ruling Communist Party, it is assumed that the contradictory debate seen in the Chinese media is a way for the Chinese government to send trial balloons about possible changes and gauge possible reactions.

Commentary Leading to this Most Recent Golden Week

In a sense, the recent May Day public holiday (May 1-7, 2007), was the first Golden Week since last October, as the Golden Week observed for Chinese New Year (in February this year) is rarely criticized and, if anything, most commentary call for it to be extended, if only to include Chinese New Year's Eve. Therefore, we have a running stream of commentary about Golden Weeks stretching from October 2006 to the end of April 2007 to consider.

• Last October's Golden Week was not even over that already, on October 3, 2006, the State Council, China's Cabinet, was already discussing the future of Golden Weeks. Apart from the unlikely addition of more Golden Weeks, this news item is one of the first to mention the addition of more traditional Chinese festivals as new public holidays.
• In December 2006, the Golden Weeks for 2007 were announced, along with their corresponding compensation working days.
• A few days before the 2007 Chinese New Year Golden Week, and despite calls to the contrary, the General Office of the State Council confirmed that the upcoming Golden Week would begin, as usual, on the date of the public holiday, and that therefore, the eve of Chinese New Year would be a normal working day. However, almost immediately after that Golden Week, the National People's Congress was asked to consider making Lunar New Year's Eve a public holiday.
• At the beginning of March 2007, the National Development and Reform Commission, China's top planning body, issued a draft on modifying public holidays, whereby Golden Weeks might be reduced to introduce more traditional Chinese festival public holidays.
• On March 20, 2006, we reported that the CAAC (General Administration of Civil Aviation of China ) had announced that a total of 42 chartered flights from Taiwan to China would be organized by 11 different airlines to correspond to the upcoming Chingming traditional festival (in China) and public holiday (in Taiwan). This was quite noteworthy, as whatever one might think about the spontaneousness of media reports, it is clear that the approval for the CAAC's important civil aviation schedule change could only have come from the highest levels of the Communist Party.
• Finally, at the end of April, we reported that, for the first time, a high-ranking Chinese official had stated that the Chinese government would not be opposed to Hong Kong replacing one of its Christian public holidays with a public holiday to honour the Birthday of Confucius. As this would be a nice, limited test-run, from which the Chinese government could learn, it was viewed as an important announcement concerning the possibility of eventually adding more traditional public holidays in China itself.

So, as we neared the May Day public holiday, we had many reasons to think that changes to Golden Weeks were being considered, but as each report, draft, plan or announcement, came from a different body or agency, the government was leaving itself officially uncommitted.

Commentary Since this Most Recent Golden Week

As happened after the October 2006 Golden Week, this past week, the Chinese media was immediately filled with commentary, proposals, counter-proposals, and statistics on the Golden Week that had just finished (May 1-7). Some of the highlights of these were:

• Without any surprise, there were reports of the chaos of about 180 million people all traveling at the same time, but the government swiftly announced that this was not reason, in itself, to reconsider Golden Weeks.
• Part of the reason given was the achieved economic goal of boosting domestic spending, although there were also reports that some of the extra spending was due to consumer goods purchasing (possibly of foreign products) rather than domestic service-oriented travel.
• On the topic of internal tourism, though, one bright spot for the Chinese government, in its quest for the full assimilation of Tibet, were reports of the large increase in tourism into Tibet, notably due to the new Qinghai-Lhassa high-altitude train line inaugurated last summer. One of these reports went to great lengths to describe the benefits of this influx of tourism to Tibet, including the repair of old and dangerous steps in monasteries, and the possibility for monks to work in the tourism trade to supplement their income. This influx of Han tourism to Tibet, although statistically small on the scale of the Chinese economy, is important for the Chinese government's Tibet policy, and it coincided with one of the strongest recent statements made by a government spokesman, against the Dalai Lama. In that statement, published in the South American edition of the People's Daily, on the day of the Pope's visit to Brazil for the canonization of Frey Galvão, the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Jiang Yu, asserted that the decades of action and words by the Dalai Lama had proved him to be a secessionist activist rather than the religious leader he claims to be.
• One statement, by Zhang Xiqin, the deputy director of the National Tourism Administration of China, raised the possibility of staggering the Golden Weeks public holidays, in a manner akin to what many European countries do for school holidays. In other another statement, Zhang Xiqin again evoked the possibility of linking the Golden Weeks to more traditional festivals, but remained firmly committed to the principle of Golden Weeks.

Outlook on the Future of Golden Week Public Holidays

Based on the above, it seems certain that the already announced October 2007, Golden Week will proceed as announced in December 2006. As mentioned in our post about the possible swap, in Hong Kong, of a Christian public holiday for the Birthday of Confucius, the earliest occurrence of a Confucius Birthday public holiday in Hong Kong would be in September 2008; which would give time to the Chinese government to analyze its acceptance and benefits before announcing the 2009 Golden Week public holidays, in the late fall of 2008. We would therefore expect Golden Weeks to proceed as usual in 2008, with the first possible changes announced at the end of 2008 for 2009.