Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This is Roundtable.
Long lines at the Temple of Heaven, sold-out rural B&Bs, concerts pulling in record crowds. The May Day holiday in China has evolved from a travel rush into a full-blown economic phenomenon. Beyond selfies and sightseeing, it's now about digital upgrades, home appliance trade-ins, and reverse tourism, and so much more.
That's redefining how people spend their hard-earned yuan across the country. What does this say about where China's consumer economy is heading? Coming to you live from Beijing, this is Roundtable. I'm He Yang. For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherly and Yu Shun in the studio. First on today's show.
So the May Labor Day holiday has just wrapped, and wow, China was on the move. Tourist spots were buzzing, but it wasn't just the usual suspects such as Beijing and Shanghai. More people, including international visitors, are exploring beyond the big names. Think Chengdu's spicy eels.
eats, Xi'an's ancient vibes, and Guilin's unreal scenery. It helps that China's rolling out the red carpet for overseas travelers, more visa-free and duty-free policies. And yes, mobile payments do work with foreign cards. No more awkward cash moments at milk tea shops. Even better, barrier-free travel is finally getting attention in cities such as Hangzhou. We're seeing more ramps,
Oh yeah, so figures released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism revealed that during this five-day May Day holiday, Chinese travelers took an estimated 314 million domestic trips, marking a 6.4% increase from the previous year.
Tourist spending also saw a notable rise, reaching 180 billion yuan, that's roughly 25 billion US dollars, and an 8% year-on-year jump that highlights the sustained vitality of consumer activity. Yeah, that makes sense, right? You get more people traveling, you get an increase in the travel numbers, then you're going to get an increase in the spending numbers too. Oh yeah, as we know, this May Day holiday running from May the 1st to 5th is kind of a...
one of the busiest travel periods of this year, of the year, you know. During this time, millions of Chinese travelers hit the road to visit their families, explore domestic destinations, or venture abroad. And this surge in travel provides a kind of boost to the transportation, tourism, and also retail sectors. Oh, see, I didn't know that. So I'm still learning, right? I haven't completed my first year in the country yet. And I know that spring festival time is...
Probably the biggest time of the year for travel. But I didn't know that this May holiday was right up there with it. Everybody knows, yes, that this is the time that everybody's on the move. Yes, but it's moving for different purposes. When it's the Chinese New Year, a.k.a. Spring Festival, then that's when everybody's thinking, I should go home. Otherwise, my parents are probably not going to be happy about this when they're chatting with their neighbors. But with the May Day holiday, it's more like... Freedom! Yes, go wherever.
you want. It's perfectly fine to just, you know, travel with your boyfriend or girlfriend and not return to your ancestral home and your parents. I don't think they will have bad things to say about that. Yeah, that basically, I think, relates to the length of the holiday, right? One of the holidays is this May Day holiday. Another one is, of course, the National Day holiday. It's even longer and people will plan maybe even, you
distance of the destinations. Get further away from home, further away from the office too, huh? Yeah.
Beijing is an example of how busy things were. There was a recent Xinhua article, and a reporter from that media outlet learned from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism that during the May Day holiday, Beijing received a total of 17.9 million tourists. That's up 5.6% from last year. The total tourism expenditure was about $2.
Just under 21 billion yuan, that's about $2.9 billion. And that too is an increase of almost 7%. So the capital was busy, busy, busy. I guess so. And also as a Bejinger, let me offer you a quick report on what it was like on the ground. It was really fascinating for me in the sense that I realized that Beijing is busy, but in different ways.
As let's say the regular routes, which are usually really crowded, congested mainly because of locals or, you know, just residents here going to work and doing, you know, our regular conducting our regular business. These routes were probably kind of quiet and there might even have been traffic jams on the road. Hooray, that is great. But when it's the subway lines as well as the streets that lead to tourist attractions, it's
It's just people everywhere. Yeah, which is probably really great for the local businesses. But yeah, and so if you're a Beijing local or if you're a very shrewd tourist, traveler person,
or what have you, then picking the right routes becomes kind of a really, yeah. - That's like level three understanding of Beijing. I think I'm still at level 2.2 understanding. But even I know that during the holidays, the areas, and these were some of the busiest areas in Beijing during the holiday. Wangfu Jing, that's a popular place to go. That was on the list, the Tiananmen Square,
area that's where the Forbidden City is right by the way I saw a news report the lineup to get into the Forbidden City was outside of the entrance and down the sidewalk a little bit there were a lot of people waiting there yeah that Temple of Heaven of course Summer Palace of course and a few more areas those were shown to be the top top tourist attractions here in here in Beijing yeah not only these popular destinations
performance market is also very popular you know in during this May Day holiday Beijing held around 1,600 commercial performances attracting about six hundred and sixty eight thousand audiences and achieving a revenue of about 242 million yuan that's more than 33 million US dollars which is a 10% of increase compared and also
compared to last year, of course. And the extended consumption of performing arts such as traveling with music and five-hour living circle around concerts has become a new growth point. I think there are a lot of celebrities and concerts going on during this holiday, right? Oh, yes. Well, I can at least name two that kind of dominated my WeChat friend moments for those two nights. One was
I was very lucky to participate as well. That is, we had New Pants, that's a Beijing band, hold a concert in Gongti, in the workers' stadium. Okay, Steve has this really blank face. No, I've heard of workers' stadiums. That's like a big concert. Well, it's not just a concert venue, but it's used as a concert venue, right? Absolutely. And then when you have this homegrown band, it's almost like homecoming, right?
And then hold this huge concert in seven years in this very special stadium for Beijingers. And I know lots of fans travel the country to come and see them. And I was there as well. And this is going to be my happy place. Just, you know, a quick preview for the Friday show. And yeah, so like that's just one example of, you know, a really popular concert market. And also Hans Zimmer.
Oh, yeah, right. I heard he was coming. So you went there or you saw it on your friend's WeChat moments? I saw it in my friend's WeChat moments. I have to count my yawns very carefully. There are so many shows I want to see. Yeah, so that was really cool that this Hollywood-renowned actor
score music composer. He was here in Beijing performing as well. So just two examples that highlight the booming performance market here in China.
Talking about pricey, there are also some incentives or policies are making things not that pricey. One thing is the trading program. It is quite popular in recent years. This is a kind of government issued subsidy policy where users can trade in their old items when purchasing new ones and in return they receive a subsidy.
And the range of eligible products includes household appliances, furniture, electronics, cars, and even houses, to be honest. So from the beginning of 2025 to the starting of May the 5th, the number of applications for car trade in subsidies exceeded 3 million and consumers purchased more than 55 million units of 12 major categories of household appliances via the trading program.
and more than 41 million digital products such as mobile phones. In the first four days of this holiday, the number of applicants for car trading subsidies exceeded
60,000 and driving new car sales of 8.8 billion yuan. That's about 1.2 billion US dollars. First four days of the holiday. Oh, yeah. We're buying cars. Yeah. Could you also offer us a little bit of explanation for those who don't follow our show every day about the trade-in programs here in China, in the sense that it really has boosted consumption? It's not like...
I give you an old gadget and I get an immediately a new gadget that's not that simple but it is like you know I am still trading in kind of like that though but you still need to pay extra to get the new one yeah sure yeah it's not yeah it's not completely that would be a terrible business idea I guess so but it would really work well with me lifelong warranty and get a new one yeah yeah so that would
would kind of let's say if you're thinking about maybe you could get a new item of some sort in your household or in the garage and now you know with this it really gives you the financial incentive to switch to a new one.
with paying a bit more. Yeah, during the holiday period, the Ministry of Commerce, they monitored the situation and they found that the sales of home appliances, cars, as you mentioned, you should also communication equipment. They increased by about 15, 13 and 10 percent, 10 percent respectively year on year. And smart home products, too. We talk about that on Roundtable not so long ago. I think they had an increase of 20 percent
year on year on key e-commerce platforms. So those areas were doing quite well. Maybe all these shoppers listened to that episode of Roundtable about this smart home equipment and went out and made some purchases. Oh, yeah. That would be a very good decision, I would think, you know, listening to the show. And also service consumption or service-oriented consumption has increased.
shown some pretty bright figures in this area as well. And also one other thing I noticed is food delivery orders have been on the search. I don't know if that kind of ties into the service consumption, but I'm a little puzzled. Like during the holiday, people are actually ordering more food delivery. What do you think is going on?
This year, actually, milk tea and juice as well as hamburgers and french fries topped hottest selling categories on the food delivery platform during this May Day holiday. With upgraded subsidies, the delivery volume of milk tea during the holiday increased by 100% week on week and 120% year on year. I kind of get it. I was one of the contributors of the hamburger and french fry online orders. Yeah.
I think, and we were chatting about this before the show, and Heung-Yoo said, why increase? Because people are traveling and it doesn't seem to make sense. I'm guessing that...
many people might not order a lot of food during their daily lives, right? So during the holiday, they think, ah, just a little treat this time. So I'm going to splurge a little bit, maybe get a milk tea or two, maybe a hamburger, french fries, or a couple of those things. Maybe that's what contributed to it. People generally who didn't order from that were suddenly ordering from that. Yeah, I was thinking the same. Maybe...
like in the weekdays people just go to their canteens or just go to have their lunch near their workplace and that's kind of offline stores and restaurants
And when it's during the holiday, they maybe go traveling and they can order food delivery in their hotels. Oh, yes. Right. Yeah. So these are all of the scenarios. Maybe they can order food. And I think it is also becoming a trend that you can just, you know, get whatever you want, even in the hotel and are traveling. See, that's another thing that immediately I feel maybe there is a generation gap or whatever it is.
I used to think when you finally travel to a different place and you check into the hotel, isn't it the wonderful opportunity to actually explore some local eateries? But now I think young people don't think that way. They're like, yeah, I'm just going to stay in the hotel. I'm going to order food delivery to my room and I'm going to...
Yeah, and I'm just going to enjoy that. I will tell you, during the first few weeks of moving to China, we were waiting for our apartment. And my wife and I stayed in a hotel in one of the downtown areas of Beijing. In the lobby area of the hotel, they have a food delivery arrival box.
and it's all a numbered system. You've probably seen this before, I would guess. But it was a constant stream of food delivery coming to the hotel. And of course, they can't go up to the room, right? So what they do is they just open the box, put it in there, and then you come down and use your app to open up the door. It'll just pop open when you hit the number and then you get your food that way. I'm not surprised by that at all. I saw it firsthand.
And also we've seen that mobile payment has shaped the way we spend during the May holiday to a certain extent because we still see
Mobile payment numbers go up. Despite all these years in China, I think increasingly we are going cashless. But this is also interesting if you have a look or have in mind that international travelers are taking advantage of this very speedy and convenient payment system as well. Oh, yeah. A report published by WeChat on May the 5th
It's saying that during the holiday period, the number of WeChat Pay transactions increased by more than 10% year-on-year, while the number of cross-border transactions by mainland users using WeChat Pay grew by 37% year-on-year, which means Chinese users are also going abroad to use online payment. Also, during the holiday, the number of transactions in the catering industry increased by 12%.
Year-on-year popular local food and beverage brands such as Mingxue Bingcheng Luckin Coffee and Heidi Lau became top consumer choices. WeChat shops also saw a 62% year-on-year increase in order volume during this holiday. And among WeChat gift categories, orders for accessories like bracelets and anklets grew by over 160%.
Month on month. Is there a bracelet and anklet trend that we need to be talking about? Maybe in the future show. Yeah, the WeChat increases. That's interesting, right? In fact, I was asking Yushin about a trip that he took, I think, last year or the year before. And we were just chatting about the fact that the place that he went, this was an international location. A lot of shops and stores there were set up
to take WeChat Pay, which is such a convenience for people traveling outside of China. It's just such a convenience, right? Exactly. And that's great for the company too, but it's great for tourists that that's an available service. That's also what I would like to mention. One, another point, I think we've mentioned a little bit, it's quite a long term.
holiday in comparison. And another popular trend is that the extended holiday strategy, some people, you know, may they may still be on vacation right now, because they have this kind of clever strategy by taking just four days off, and then they can enjoy an 11 day holiday.
Oh, yeah. Attaching one to the other. Oh, yeah. So this kind of slightly longer breaks like this have continued to fuel a surge in outbound travel among Chinese tourists. And popular international destinations include Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, and so on. And people are using online payment in these areas as well. And also China has welcomed international tourists this month.
May holiday with special tax refund and travel policies.
What information do we have here? Yeah, so data from the online travel booking platforms showed that the inbound travel orders for this year's holiday, they increased 173% from the previous year. The countries that Yuxin just mentioned about popular destinations for Chinese tourists to visit, well, tourists from those countries are coming into China, South Korea, Japan, and Singapore.
which is really, really cool to see. The growth is the result of the combined effect policies such as the visa-free entry, convenient payment options, and outbound tax refunds. That's a quote from the foreign ministry spokesperson. And he also said...
from official statistics and mentioned that the total spending from the tourists that came in in 2024, it was about $94 billion. And that would mark almost a 78% increase. And again, it's thanks to those types of policies. Oh, yeah. So this in-store tax refund policy was introduced by Chinese authorities on April 26. And it is to
improve outbound tax refunds, further promoting the immediate refund upon purchase model to make shopping in China more convenient and beneficial for foreign consumers. So simply put, it means that after... Immediate refunds. Immediate, yes. So after shopping at a kind of a designated stores, you can get your tax refund right away. No need to wait in line at the airport for a refund when you leave the country. So...
That's how it's becoming immediate because you can get your tax refund right at the store. That is so much more convenient, isn't it? It's such a more convenient option for tourists. And again, it's...
If you know this as a tourist, right, it's just another reason to put China on your list of destinations. Yeah. Right? Some people say they just get – they can buy more when they get another one. Yeah, it's just money straight back into your wallet. And it's just –
Like you said, it avoids the necessary lines at the airport, which is annoying. And even when you go to the airport, you stand and even though you get that money back, you somehow feel like you're not getting that money back because of the long process that the in-between period. So this is just a really, really smart thing to do, I think.
Yeah, one example is in Yiwu, Zhejiang province. During the May Day holiday, Yiwu is known as the world's supermarket and an emerging travel destination, and it has attracted a large number of foreign visitors. And this new tourism plus shopping consumption model is making Yiwu a key stop for those looking to shop in China. And during this holiday, merchants actively adjusted their business strategies by opening up
to retail sales in order to attract more customers because this market used to be like bulk purchase because for a lot of these vendors to get their commodities in this supermarket and now it's opening to maybe individuals to buy affordable and cheap products
And fantastic products. Yes. That they will not be able to find in their home country. And there are also other reasons why inbound travel is so popular. One includes, I guess, visa policies and also... Flight frequency. Oh, that's necessary. Yep. Yep. More opportunities to fly into the country. And again, it's just an appealing... All of these measures put together just makes it so appealing.
when you're choosing where to go on vacation. And that just is kind of testament, I think, to China's commitment to expanding openness and bringing benefits to all the travelers that come into the country. And then you've got the global interest in Chinese culture too, right? We've talked about the success of Ninja too, which really...
on the International Animation Map.
Right? It was just such a huge story, and we talked about it here on the show, but all international media markets were talking about it. And then you've got Chinese food also, which is always a big draw, and the intangible cultural heritage spots, and then the list of overseas, I guess, places to visit when people come in from overseas on social media platforms, and the influx of...
Foreign visitors, if we can call that to Chinese social media too. I mean, all of the things that we're talking about all together just makes for a perfect little recipe of tourism. Hmm.
Oh, yeah. Some international events like Canton Fair also attracted a lot of international visitors or more exactly international buyers to come to China and see the Chinese products. Also, social media, as you said, Steve, like influencers like I Show Speed, his live streaming actually opened up a kind of a window for a lot of international...
internet users to see an authentic China and then a lot of people also got influenced and tried to visit China to see how good it could be and a lot of reports are saying since 2022 he has been live streaming his trips to more than 20 countries around the world and along the way he has experienced
frequent incidents like being robbed, attacked, or caught in accidents. And in contrast, his journey through China has been smooth and safe, and he has been warmly welcomed wherever he goes. And also, we've talked about how travel has been big in big cities and also in rural areas as well, in lesser well-known places as well. And I think this is an interesting new trend that's
popping up in, well, in recent years. I would say this goes beyond a trend. This is more of a alternative option that more and more people are embracing who are domestic or international because
Because I guess on social media and all over media outlets, increasingly people know more than just the big names of Beijing and Shanghai. You realize that there are so many other places in China that's worth a visit and it's cheaper.
but also has really great and unique things to offer. Yeah, I completely agree with that. And again, you know, when and I can't speak for everyone who doesn't live in China, but I think when international tourists don't know much about China, they
then those are the two big cities that come to mind, right? Beijing, Shanghai, Beijing, Shanghai. And so you kind of get it in your mind that that's what China is. But through the help of social media and through the help of these tourism organizations
policies into effect. It just, it goes to show that, and again, that the guy who was here, I Show Speed, right? Yeah. Even he was just like kind of blown away, I think. So when people come here, then they see that this country is so much more than Beijing and Shanghai. It really is. Mm-hmm.
One more thing to offer by a lot of these Chinese policies is that the barrier-free travel in a lot of cities and one city is Hangzhou. So traveling in Hangzhou, a city that has hosted Asian Paragames Hangzhou in 2023, can be barrier-free. And there are five barriers.
one-day accessible itineraries in the city launched by the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Culture, Radio, TV and Tourism that link major cultural sites, competition venues and also commercial districts. So basically, they offered you five of these routes and you can go with a totally accessible way.
Yeah, because if you don't know, then it's kind of planned out for you a little bit. It's like a set meal. You don't need to think too much. And then great, there are five options. And then you know you're going to be taken care of. Yeah, and I took a look at some of these routes. Some of them even pass through different districts across all of Hangzhou.
And this shows that they rely heavily on maybe the local public transportation system. And such infrastructure doesn't appear overnight, I was thinking. So it's only because the city has truly incorporated accessibility into this project.
or into their urban planning that it's able to offer a variety of routes for people to explore. Yeah, and the different routes, one package was for a mausoleum and then a boat cruise and then a fish viewing session
And a flower pond. That sounds like a cool activity. Then the Song Dynasty town scenic area. And then they've got it all planned out. It's like a tour package, right? So it's all broken down by time. That was one. Then there was another route that was for tea fragrance and ancient charm where you went to a tea museum and then to...
something called the West Lake Circuit, which is like cruising around. Then you got to watch a water performance in that package. So again, it's for people who come into the area and think, oh, what should I do here? Well, you don't have to think that hard. It's already organized for you. Yeah. And also it's designed for those with disabilities in mind. And I think it's
important to highlight when a city has really put this on the priority list to make, let's say, you know, barrier-free elevators, accessible infrastructure for everyone. And they also say that this is really great for seniors, pregnant ladies, families with young children. I guess, you know, it's really, it really takes the, um,
the pressure off your shoulders if you know that you can travel easily and especially with these set meal, quote unquote, set meal options, it takes a lot of the planning off your mind, which is great. And it's an urban, it's an urban tourism idea, but it's an inclusive human-centered tourism idea. Yes. And that is great to know. And that's our wrap for the May holiday episode
spending adventure as such and see you in 2026 we'll have updated numbers for you yes we sure will