Chinese New Year, for Chinese people, is the most important traditional festival of the year. There is a folk proverb: “Rich or poor, go Home for the New Year”. China’s Spring Festival runs from January 28 to March 8 this year, a total of 40 days before and after. But with the spread of the Epidemic in China, the emergence of localized outbreaks, and the fact that Shijiazhuang, 200 kilometers from Beijing, has become the hardest hit, officials have announced that the Spring Festival will be based on the principle of “reducing the movement of people, reducing the risk of travel, reducing the gathering of people, and strengthening personal protection”. The Beijing government took the lead at the end of last month in proposing a “local New Year’s Eve,” and 29 provinces and cities, including Shenzhen, Shanghai, Henan and Shanxi, followed suit, suggesting “not returning home unless necessary” and “not leaving the province unless necessary. The Chinese New Year is a Time of great change.
This year’s Spring Festival is revised down to 296 million passengers, only 1/10th of previous years
Compared to China’s 2020 Spring Festival, which carried 3 billion passengers, the estimated number of passengers to be carried in this year’s Spring Festival has been revised downward from 407 million to the latest 296 million, which is less than 1/10th of last year’s figure.
The Spring Festival brings a big impact on the scale of the reduction in the flow of people and money
A view of a large number of passengers boarding and alighting at Shijiazhuang Railway Station during the Spring Festival on Jan. 10, 2020.
China’s Spring Festival brings not just a flow of people, but a flow of money. CNN has reported that the Chinese are expected to spend more than $100 billion on Food, drink and shopping during the Spring Festival, twice the amount Americans spend on Thanksgiving, and that all the miles the Chinese travel during the Spring Festival are eight times the distance from the earth to the sun, and that the Chinese Spring Festival has created a miracle of dramatic expansion in the transportation industry.
The Spring Festival homecoming route extends mainly from economically developed regions to less developed regions, with the origin and destination connecting two different China’s. This year’s dramatic reduction in the size of the Spring Festival has had some degree of impact on the economic, social and political levels of China.
Photo: Professor Fan Shih-ping, Institute of Political Science, National Taiwan Normal University
In an interview with Voice of America, Fan Shih-ping, a professor at the Institute of Political Science at Taiwan Normal University, said that on the economic side, many people will bring money back home to honor their Parents and buy gifts for their children, significantly expanding China’s domestic demand market, but spending New Year’s Eve locally reduces consumption and is an impact on the economy.
On a social level, many people go home once a year, and if they don’t go home this year, they will have to wait another year. Many children left behind in the countryside see their mothers and fathers once a year, and now they don’t have the opportunity to do so, so the impact on families is not insignificant.
On the political front, Fan said, Chinese Communist Party President Xi Jinping delivered his 2021 New Year’s greeting speech on Dec. 31 last year, saying that China “has written an epic poem against the epidemic. )?”
Taiwan Normal University Institute of Political Science Professor Fan Shiping said: “China’s Spring Festival this thing, from 1978 after the reform and opening up, foreign migrant workers to go home for the New Year, 1978 to now 40 years, never once stopped, Xi Jinping you are how to get, become the only time since the reform and opening up of China, I think this on his prestige in the party influence I think this has a big impact on his prestige in the party, affecting the general public. You tell people that you have succeeded in preventing the epidemic, so why can’t you go home for the New Year?”
Spring Festival is a road that connects “Family” and “nation”
Further, the Chinese Spring Festival is not just a joyous celebration of the New Year’s reunion, but also a channel for the Chinese government to promote Xi Jinping’s political achievements and the Communist Party’s consolidation of its leadership.
Fan Shiping said, “I think the New Year’s Eve in Taiwan has faded, but it is still very important in Chinese society, and it has an impact on the legitimacy of the Communist Party’s rule. You go to their annual Spring Festival dinner, in fact, they are talking about one thing: live a good Life, go home for the New Year, ah, the whole family reunion, all because of the Party, ah, President Xi gave us ah, we are now moving towards well-off ah, now is the Han and Tang Dynasty, ah …… He actually wants to link the ‘family’ with the ‘nation’. Now you have no family, how to make it like this!”
Taiwan’s International Institute for Strategic Studies executive Luo Qing-sheng also said that the reduction in the scale of the Spring Festival will have an impact on China’s consumption and economy, especially in rural areas, if a person spends 1,000 yuan roughly estimated, 3 billion people are spending 3 trillion yuan; once the homecoming wave is reduced, this consumption is gone, because the money is to bring back to friends and relatives, stay in the city will not see to spend so much.
Luo Qingsheng said: “Usually these people, the Spring Festival he came back, he will bring money back, bring income back, so for the local, the original countryside, these villages may not normally have people, only grandparents, but at this time, everyone is back, there will be some gathering activities, can make that period of time, the countryside or small towns in the mainland’s economic vitality The economy of the countryside or small towns on the mainland can be revitalized. If he does not have so many people back this year, his mainland consumption will drop, 3 billion people go back and 400 million people go back, the impact of this economy is impacted.”
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