Spring Festival holiday cheer boosts spending

BEIJING — From bustling ski slopes in Heilongjiang province in China's far northeast to booming duty-free shopping in South China's Hainan province, the country's record-long Spring Festival holiday saw a surge in travel, retail activity and tech-powered consumption, underscoring the country's economic vitality and growing global appeal.

At Zhuhai highway port of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge in South China, a floral market was in full swing, with rows of vibrant fresh flowers greeting holiday travelers.

"Buying a few flowers to decorate the home symbolizes prosperity in the year ahead," said a visitor surnamed Ho, who drove to this port from the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The nine-day Spring Festival holiday, the longest on record, spurred strong travel demand. Latest data from the Ministry of Transport showed that cross-regional passenger traffic during the holiday rose 8.2 percent year-on-year to top 2.8 billion trips, underlining the scale of China's annual travel rush, often described as the world's largest human migration.

Cross-border travel also picked up during this period. In the first six days of the holiday, outbound travel spending surged in popular destinations, with offline transactions via WeChat Pay in Malaysia and the Maldives soaring 131 percent and 186 percent, respectively, compared with the same period last year, according to data released by WeChat.

At the same time, China implemented a series of measures to facilitate inbound travel. Starting from Feb 17, the first day of the Chinese New Year, China extended its visa-free policy to ordinary passport holders from Canada and Britain, bringing the total number of countries enjoying unilateral visa-free access to 50.