Festival Fever
Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival, has a history of at least 4,000 years, and is the country’s most important yearly celebration. It is also the time when Chinese people spend the most on gifts, food, entertainment and communication.
According to China Mobile, China’s number one wireless carrier, the number of text messages sent during the week-long 2008 Spring Festival hit a record 17 billion, up from 15 billion in the same period in 2005. A recent online survey by IT company Tegic Communications also showed that close to 80 percent of respondents favored sending New Year greetings via SMS.
Growing numbers of Chinese youngsters are also spending their Chinese New Year holiday online, where they can “light” electronic fireworks, “eat” electronic dumplings, and enjoy virtual Spring Festival interaction, all with the click of a mouse.
Bank card transactions in China over the New Year period rose a whopping 60 percent year-on-year, according to China Unionpay, a national bank card network operator. Chinese consumers spent nearly RMB 30 billion (US$4 billion) with their cards during the festival period. In total, domestic retail sales rose 16 percent to RMB 255 billion over the holiday, despite severe snowstorms in southern China. Card payments accounted for 11.5 percent of those sales.
As more affluent Chinese opted to spend the holiday overseas, their bank card spending surged over 40 percent year-on-year to RMB 1.6 billion (US$225 million) with over 540,000 transactions. This equates to nearly RMB 3000 (US$ 420) per transaction, nearly seven times the domestic rate.
Falling at the end of this year’s Spring Festival, Valentine’s Day also saw some big spending by young Chinese on their partners. Once puritanically critical of any occasion that paraded love, China has now fully embraced Valentine’s Day - like Christmas another “imported Western festival” - as a succession of consumer opportunities sugar-coated in romance.
Today, February 14th in China means multi-colored roses and heart-shaped Ferrero Rocher, pricey “lover’s menus” and booming business for fashion brand names, whose signature bags now hang on the arms of many a proud Chinese female. Despite some concern over the steady erosion of Chinese culture by Westernized practices, the growing popularity of Valentine’s Day, both with the younger generation and the merchants who promote it, will ensure this is one import that won’t go away.