CBN丨Travel, consumption saw boost during Spring Festival holiday

Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.

Coming up on today’s program

• Spring Festival gave travel and consumption strong boost as 8-day holiday ends;
• China imposes additional tariffs on certain U.S. products starting from Feb. 10

Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours

As China wraps up its 8-day Spring Festival holiday celebrating the start of the Year of the Snake, the world's second-largest economy has witnessed shopping and travel booms ignited by hundreds of millions of Chinese people's family reunions.

During the holiday, over 2.3 billion passenger trips were made across regions in China. The total included approximately 96.26 million railway trips, 2.2 billion road trips, 9.35 million waterway trips, and 18.29 million air trips.

With a string of holiday-targeted domestic blockbusters bringing numerous moviegoers to cinemas across China, the country's film industry proved to be one of the biggest winners during this Spring Festival consumption spree.

China's Spring Festival box office revenue reached a record 9.51 billion yuan, with nationwide movie attendance hitting an all-time high of 187 million people, setting new records for the Spring Festival season, data from China Film Administration showed on Wednesday. 

From Jan. 29 to Feb. 3, the daily box office exceeded 1 billion yuan for six consecutive days. Among the six domestically produced films, animated feature "Ne Zha 2" emerged as the undisputed leader, grossing an impressive 4.84 billion yuan.

While cinema boomed during the holiday, so did travel and leisure activities across China. According to the data from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 501 million domestic trips were made during the holiday, an increase of 5.9 percent year-on-year, bringing in a total revenue of 677 billion yuan, up 7 percent year on year.

Cross border travels also saw significant increase. Data from National Immigration Administration (NIA) showed on Wednesday that border authorities across the country processed 14.37 million border crossings, in which foreign nationals’ inbound and outbound crossings totaled 958,000, marking a 22.9 percent increase year-on-year.

Consumption was another standout trend. Meituan, one of China's leading e-commerce platforms for services, reported a staggering 300 percent year-on-year increase in online reservations for Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve dinners. 

Data from the People's Bank of China showed that during the first seven days of the holiday, UnionPay and online payment systems processed 22.08 billion transactions, with a total volume of 8.52 trillion yuan, up 25.7 percent and 17.1 percent year on year, respectively.

• China has struck back against the executive order of US President Donald Trump to impose 10 percent tariffs on Chinese imports with a series of countermeasures, including retaliatory tariffs, new export controls, and a dispute filing with the World Trade Organization. China will impose additional tariffs on certain US imports starting Feb. 10, including 15 percent on coal and liquefied natural gas and 10 percent on crude oil, agricultural machinery, large-displacement vehicles, and pickup trucks, the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council announced yesterday. Meanwhile, China has decided to add two U.S. firms, namely PVH Corp. and Illumina, Inc., to the country's unreliable entity list, according to a statement released Tuesday by the Ministry of Commerce. 

Greater Bay Area, Greater future

• Guangdong hosts its annual High-quality Development Conference today, the first working day after the Chinese New Year holiday, in Guangzhou. The conference, with a focus on  building a modern industrial system and leveraging Guangdong's robust industrial base and technological prowess to drive modernization and sustainable growth, marks the third consecutive year that Guangdong has convened this significant gathering to rally efforts across the province toward high-quality development. With the course to be charted by this year's High-quality Development Conference, Guangdong aims to lead the nation in constructing a modern industrial system with greater international competitiveness, building on its GDP of 14 trillion yuan in 2024, which has maintained its top position in the country for 36 consecutive years. Apart from a plenary session, the event also features group discussions on key topics, including the transformation of traditional industries, the development of strategic emerging industries, the implementation of the "High-quality Development Project for Guangdong's Counties, Towns, and Villages," and the promotion of foreign trade, foreign investment, foreign outsourcing, outbound economic cooperation, and overseas talent attraction.
• Hong Kong's economy expanded 2.5 percent last year as exports of goods and services maintained growth, according to advance estimates released by the SAR government. The region's GDP rose 2.4 percent in real terms in the fourth quarter from a year earlier.

Next on industry and company news

• Sales of several Chinese new energy vehicle makers surged in January despite the first month of the year being a traditional off-peak period for car sales. BYD sold 300,500 NEVs last month, up nearly 50 percent from a year earlier. BAIC BluePark sold 7,219 autos last month, up nearly five-fold from the same period last year. Sales of Huawei Technologies’ Harmony Intelligent Mobility Alliance, including Aito, Luxeed, Stelato and Maextro, rose 6.1 percent to nearly 35,000 units in January from a year earlier. Changan Auto’s Avatr delivered just over 8,000 units last month, up 14 percent from the same period last year. Among NEV startups, Xpeng Motors delivered 30,350 units and Nio 13,863 units, up 268 percent and 38 percent, respectively, in the period. Leapmotor Technology’s deliveries more than doubled to 25,170 units.
• XPeng chief executive He Xiaopeng expressed confidence in doubling annual deliveries by 2025 at the Guangdong High-quality Development Conference on Wednesday. He also announced plans to achieve L3-level autonomous driving by the second half of the year, supported by a projected R&D investment of 9.5 billion yuan, of which approximately 4.5 billion yuan will be dedicated to artificial intelligence.
• Several major Chinese platforms, including Baidu Intelligent Cloud, Huawei Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and 360 Digital Security, have launched the DeepSeek large model and allowed users to access DeepSeek-R1 and DeepSeek-V3 models, after the Chinese startup's open-source artificial intelligence chatbot became a global sensation. 
• Enlight Media surged by the 20-percent limit today after Ne Zha 2, which the Chinese entertainment firm distributes, has so far raked in over 5 billion yuan, becoming the Chinese mainland's fourth highest-grossing film ever.
• China's State Administration for Market Regulation said yesterday that it launched an investigation into Google for suspected violation of China’s anti-monopoly law.

Switching gears to financial news

• China had 52 private pension fund sales agencies as of Dec. 31, compared with 37 a year earlier, according to the Asset Management Association of China. Among them, 19 were commercial banks, 25 were securities companies, and eight were independent sales institutions.

Wrapping up with a quick look at the stock market

• Chinese stocks ended mixed on Wednesday. The benchmark Shanghai Composite fell 0.65 percent, while the Shenzhen Component inched up 0.1 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index closed 1 percent lower and the TECH index dipped 0.9 percent.

Executive Editor: Sonia YU

Editor: LI Yanxia

Host: Stephanie LI

Writer: Stephanie LI

Sound Editor: Stephanie LI

Graphic Designer: ZHENG Wenjing, LIAO Yuanni

Produced by 21st Century Business Herald Dept. of Overseas News.

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