The three-day New Year holiday has sparked a surge in consumer spending and travel in China, with online platforms reporting surging demand for flights, hotels and leisure activities.
Nearly 590 million passenger trips were made nationwide during the holiday, with an average of about 198 million per day, marking a nearly 20 percent increase from last year, data from the Ministry of Transport showed.
Air ticket bookings for popular destinations rose 20 percent year-on-year during the holiday, according to the travel platform Qunar, and domestic hotel bookings on Fliggy increased 280 percent on the first day of the New Year holiday, compared with the same period last year.
New Year holiday bookings for domestic scenic attractions jumped more than fourfold from a year ago, while inbound tourism reservations also rose sharply, marking the first consumption boom of 2026, according to the latest report from the online ticketing platform Ctrip.
"During the New Year holiday, people seem more inclined to travel to the suburbs. Many are really enjoying outdoor activities," said a resident in Beijing.
"The queues are very well managed. We are not used to it, it's crowded everywhere," said an international visitor.
"It was a nice surprise to be here. So I hope we can come back, but we don't know when," said another international visitor.
"We see it's very busy and it's a very nice setting. We'll probably go to Shanghai, Shenzhen, stuff like that," said an international visitor.
"As a local Beijinger, I feel the New Year holiday has brought noticeably larger crowds across the city this year," said a Beijing resident.
Holiday spending is widely regarded as a key barometer of economic momentum.
Consumers showed stronger spending power during the New Year holiday, with average purchases per person up over 20 percent and spending up more than 30 percent year on year, a report from Fliggy showed.
The report also showed that leisure product reservations rose more than 270 percent from last year on the first day of the holiday.
"New Year spending feels just as strong as major shopping festivals like the 'Double 11' shopping festival. People still have strong purchasing power," said a Beijing resident.
Winter tourism is also gaining momentum.
Data from travel platforms shows a shift toward higher-quality, experience-driven snow destinations, with regions with premium ski resorts seeing sharp rises in popularity.
Travelers from southern cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen have become a major source of demand for snow tourism in northern destinations such as Altay. At the same time, flight bookings to tropical destinations such as Sanya and Haikou have surged year on year, underscoring a two-way travel flow between China’s north and south.
Younger consumers, especially those born in the 1990s and 2000s, are driving demand for quality and experience-focused travel, fueling a sharp rise in bookings for standalone vacation homes.
China sees rise in New Year travel and spending
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) on Sunday launched new year military training across all units, with forces from the army, navy, air force, rocket force, and armed police conducting intensive combat-oriented exercises to boost battlefield readiness.
On the first training day, a brigade of the Army's 79th Group Army conducted integrated combat-oriented training at an outdoor training ground. The troops continuously executed over 10 individual and squad training subjects from the training outline, focusing on enhancing their battlefield adaptability and response capabilities.
Naval forces were also active. Along the coast of the Yellow Sea, the Navy's Type 055 guided-missile destroyer Nanchang, in coordination with destroyer Xining, missile frigate Weifang, and other destroyers and frigates, carried out subjects such as naval gunnery landborne and seaborne target practices, and live firing of anti-frogman lethal rounds. They also conducted fleet air defense exercises in coordination with naval aviation, testing the troops' ability to transition from training to combat.
"Now, there is more combat-oriented training that involves the full process and all elements, aligning with future naval warfare. Whether it's basic training or coordinated training, it is no longer single-subject, single-ship, or single-platform. Now it is system-wide linkage, integration of war and training, and multi-subject fusion, testing the combat effectiveness of the ships under complex conditions," said Fang Wanhao, an officer with a destroyer flotilla of the PLA Navy.
The Air Force, involving multiple branches such as aviation, surface-to-air missile, and radar troops, conducted joint training exercises with multiple aircraft types in realistic battlefield environments to hone their combat skills. The Joint Logistics Support Force's motor transport brigade focused on difficult and critical subjects related to transport and support under extreme cold conditions. By fully integrating real combat scenarios and setting up complex emergency situations, the training aimed to enhance the officers' and soldiers' emergency response capabilities in extreme environments.
On the first training day of the new year, officers and soldiers of the People's Armed Police Yunnan Corps conducted specialized, intensive training for subjects including emergency rescue and counter-terrorism capture and annihilation, adhering to a combat-oriented training philosophy.
The Rocket Force deployed its units across multiple routes and positions, setting up formations on various training grounds. They simultaneously conducted combat-oriented training on difficult and critical subjects such as cross-regional maneuver and rapid fire assault, promoting the efficient integration of personnel with weapons and equipment, and the information network system.
"For the new year's training, we will focus on hard and intensive training closely aligned with operational missions. We will strengthen adversarial testing at extreme boundaries and in complex environments, enhance the support of technological means, and forge the superior skills to be one second faster and one move better than the enemy. We will truly achieve readiness at all times and the ability to fight at any moment, ensuring new breakthroughs in improving the level of combat-oriented training readiness," said Li Zhiyong, a PLA Rocket Force officer.
Chinese People's Liberation Army opens 2026 training season to boost combat readiness
