The number of visits to attractions in mainland China during the golden week holiday between October 1 and 8 reached 637 million, about 81% of the 782 million visits recorded during the seven-day holiday in 2019, according to the figures released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
During the eight days, domestic tourism market revenue exceeded 466 billion yuan (US$68.6 billion), compared with 649.7 billion yuan during the holiday last year. This year’s holiday was extended by one day to incorporate the Mid-Autumn Festival, which fell on October 1, which is also National Day.
The Tibet autonomous region and Qinghai and Hainan provinces saw the best recoveries, with reservations to the three destinations up by more than 30% year-on-year, according to Qunar, an online travel service provider.
Among the popular attractions, those in the northwestern and southwestern provinces that usually take longer to travel to, such as Xi’an in Shaanxi province and Dali and Lijiang in Yunnan province, were preferred by travelers.
A report by Trip.com, another online travel agency, said reservations for cars and self-driving tours recorded highs during the holiday, with the average number of cars rented on its platform each day up by 50%. It said travelers spent an average of about 2,000 yuan for car rental.
Northwestern provinces were the big winners in attracting self-driving travelers, with reservations for self-driving holidays up 140% year-on-year in Xining in Qinghai province.
On September 18, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism raised the cap on the number of daily visitors at tourist spots nationwide from 50% of operating capacity to 75% during the holiday.
Caixin service industry PMI
China’s Caixin service industry PMI was 54.8% in September, compared with 54% in August. It has been in the expansion range for five consecutive months.
Wang Zhe, a senior economist at Caixin, said the Chinese economy was still recovering from the Covid-19 epidemic, while the pace of the recovery was accelerating. Wang said the global and Chinese economies would face a lot of challenges and uncertainties due to the global pandemic and the United States presidential election.
He added that he was not optimistic about the job markets in China as the recovery of the manufacturing and service sectors had remained weak.
Meanwhile, the National Bureau of Statistics of China said Friday that the country’s manufacturing (PMI) was 51.5% last month, compared with 51% in August. It indicated that the overall situation in the manufacturing industry had recovered.
In terms of enterprise size, the PMI of large enterprises rose 0.5 percentage points to 52.5%, while that of medium enterprises fell 0.9 percentage points to 50.7%. The PMI of small enterprises surged 2.4 percentage points to 50.1%
If the PMI is above 50%, it reflects the economy is expanding. If it is less than 50%, it reflects the economy is contracting.
Company news
China Evergrande Group, a Hong Kong-listed company, said its contracted sales of properties totaled 141.63 billion yuan for the period of 38 days between September 1 and October 8, while the contracted sales volume was about 16.42 million square meters.
As of Thursday, the aggregated contracted sales amount of the company’s properties for 2020 amounted to 592.25 billion yuan, which was the equivalent to 91.1% of the full-year contracted sales target of 650 billion yuan.
The company said it had steadfastly implemented the development strategy of “high growth, controlled scale and reduced leverage” and demonstrated robust operational capacity and strong execution capabilities by developing high-quality and cost-effective products to meet market demands.
The company said it was confident it would achieve all its operational targets for the full year of 2020.
Geely Automobile Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed carmaker, said its total sales volume reached 126,365 units last month, up 11% from the same period last year. The total sales volume in the first nine months of 2020 was 875,472 units, a decline of 9% from a year ago. The company said it had achieved 66% of its revised full-year sales volume target of 1.32 million units for 2020.
The stories were written by Xu Jiangshan and first published at ATimesCN.com. They were translated by Nadeem Xu.