Â
>>REAL-TIME UPDATES IN THE WIRE. CLICK HERE<<<
Â
Â
China’s consumption and tourism showed signs of recovery in July, a traditional travel peak season, amid easing Covid restrictions and local governments’ measures to boost consumption.
China’s railway travel continued to rebound in July, with 224 million passenger trips being made, and the average daily number of railway trips rose 30.9% from the previous month, according to the China State Railway Group Co, the sole state-owned operator of the country’s railway network.
The number of tourist-based bookings for summer vacations rose 35% in July from the month before, according to China’s largest online travel agency Trip.com.
In addition, Chinese budget carrier Juneyao Airlines said on Wednesday that it run nearly 7,000 flights during the first half of the summer travel season, transporting more than 800,000 passenger trips, with the number of passengers increasing continuously.
The number of domestic flights during the period represented about 90% of the level see in the same period in 2019 and in particular, the number of flights at the end of July was close to 2019-level, it said.
The total box office reached 3.49 billion yuan ($516 million) as of Sunday, an increase of 8.1% from a year earlier, according to data from Lighthouse, a domestic box office tracker. The operation of movie theaters in most cities has basically recovered to the same level seen in 2021.
A dozen of provinces and cities including East China’s Zhejiang and Jiangxi provinces, North China’s Tianjin city and Southwest China’s Sichuan province recently rolled out hundreds of millions of yuan worth of consumption vouchers.
China’s financial hub of Shanghai launched the Double Five shopping festival on Sunday, which will last until September. As the third such shopping festival in Shanghai this year, groups of market entities including industry associations, chambers and e-commerce platforms are invited to carry out activities to spur business, said a statement on the government’s website. Read more …
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stressed at a State Council executive meeting on Friday that consumption should still be the main driver for stabilizing growth, vowing more measures in the second half to further bolster demand, starting with big-ticket consumer goods.
Apart from promoting the real estate sector and car consumption, the meeting also called for the implementation of supportive policies for pandemic-hit industries including catering, retail and tourism, and the extension of extra value-added tax deductions for services.