1 October 2025, NIICE Commentary 117678
Aditi Baral
Every year, in the first week of October (1-7 Oct), China pauses for a weeklong holiday, and yet in that pausing, it sets in motion one of the largest orchestrations of human activity on earth. For a week, the country becomes a restless tide of motion, as trains, highways, and airports strain under volumes unmatched anywhere else in the world. Imagine a holiday so immense that over 200 million train journeys take place in just seven days, while on a single day, more than 300 million people are on the move. This is not the scale of a continent, it is the movement of a single nation: China, during its “Golden Week”.
As Daniel C. Mattingly argues in his book “The Art of Political Control in China (2017)”, state control in China often operates not through overt coercion but through orchestrated routines and social structures. In other words, rather than forcing people to act, the state designs everyday routines and social systems so that citizens naturally follow patterns aligned with government objectives.
China’s “Golden Week “offers a striking real-world illustration of this principle. The state subtly shapes the Chinese people’s choices around travel and consumption, structuring everything from transportation schedules and ticket allocations to tourism campaigns and cultural programming to produce highly predictable patterns of behavior. In this sense, Golden Week in China exemplifies governance through coordination rather than compulsion, showing how China designs the patterns of everyday life to align social and economic goals.
On the surface, Golden Week appears to be a simple holiday, a well-earned break from work for people in a country where long hours and relentless productivity are the norm. But beneath the surface of vacation lies something far more calculated. This week is the world’s most strategic week off, a state-designed operation that synchronizes the movement of over a billion people, funnels billions of yuan into domestic consumption, and channels cultural participation into carefully curated spaces. It is not just time away from work but governance by calendar and a reminder that in China, even rest is coordinated with purpose.
Origin and significance
Golden Week is not an ancient tradition but a carefully engineered invention of the Chinese state. It was first introduced in 1999 during Premier Zhu Rongji’s (朱镕基) reforms, as part of a bold plan to stimulate domestic demand at a time when China’s economy was still heavily export- oriented. The government extended three existing public holidays: Spring Festival (Chinese New Year), May Day, and National Day into weeklong breaks, giving working-class people more leisure time while encouraging spending.
Among these, the National Day Golden Week, beginning every October 1st, quickly became the most significant. Only National Day was officially promoted as “Golden Week” (黄金周) in government reports and media, and the term caught on in business and tourism marketing, reinforcing the idea of a week of economic opportunity. In Chinese culture, the word “gold” (黄金, huángjīn) symbolizes prosperity and good fortune, and a week of celebration and travel aligns with positive vibes and mass participation, making the name appealing to the public. By contrast, Spring Festival was referred to as the “Spring Festival holiday”, which emphasized its cultural and familial aspects rather than economic impact.
The timing of National Day was particularly advantageous. October offers generally favorable weather across most of China and is well separated from other major holidays, allowing domestic tourism companies to maximize revenue through organized campaigns, promotions, and travel packages. Spring Festival, in contrast, falls in winter, limiting holiday tourism options for many and focusing more on family reunion travel than on leisure or spending. These factors helped National Day Golden Week gain greater prominence and media attention, solidifying its fame as the country’s economic and tourism powerhouse.
An exercise in Chronopolitics
Centered around National Day on October 1st, the seven-day break encourages domestic travel and spending at a scale few countries can match. In 2024 alone, China Railway anticipated 175 million passenger trips over ten days. These movements generated a staggering 700.8 billion yuan in tourism revenue. And in 2025, the holiday is expected to reach even greater heights, with around 2.4 billion journeys over the eight-day break—roughly 295 million travelers each day—a 3.2 percent increase over last year. The sheer scale of mobility and spending makes Golden Week one of the most powerful economic engines in China’s calendar.
But this week is not only about numbers. The state carefully controls access to popular destinations through quotas, timed entries and ticket allocations, guiding the flow of visitors and distributing tourism more evenly across regions. In this way, the holiday becomes a sophisticated form of temporal governance while shaping how people move and act, yet still allowing them to enjoy leisure and freedom within a managed framework.
Ever since the first time this idea was introduced, the results were immediate. In the very first National Day Golden Week of 1999, more than 28 million Chinese traveled domestically, generating tourism revenue of approximately 14.1 billion yuan. Since then, every year the impact of Golden Week has grown dramatically. This surge in trips and spending every year reflects both the scale of traveler mobility and the increasing economic significance of the holiday.
Culture and Red Tourism
Chinese president Xi Jinping has consistently emphasized the centrality of culture and identity in statecraft, noting in multiple occasions that “Culture is the soul of a nation. A country will only thrive if its culture thrives, and a nation will be strong only if its culture is strong. Without high cultural confidence and cultural prosperity, there can be no great rejuvenation of the Chinese nati.” He also strongly believes that historical and cultural heritage not only vividly tells the past but also profoundly affects the present and future; it belongs not only to us but also to future generations.
Golden Week serves as a pivotal platform for actualizing this vision, intertwining vacation with cultural education and ideological reinforcement. Beyond its economic and logistical dimensions, the holiday is a strategic mechanism for promoting cultural heritage and encouraging broad participation in cultural tourism all for fostering collective national identity.
A notable aspect of this cultural engagement is the priority and rise of “red tourism”, which focuses on sites associated with China's revolutionary history and the Communist Party's legacy. Because Golden Week coincides with China’s National Day celebrations, patriotic sentiment in Chinese people runs especially high during this period, fueling the popularity of “red tourism” and drawing millions to sites tied to the Communist Party’s revolutionary legacy. This year due the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War, destinations such as Yan’an, Jinggangshan, and Shaoshan have seen significant increases in visitors. For instance, ticket bookings for Jinggangshan increased by 22 percent year-on-year during the 2025 summer vacation, while hotel bookings rose by 40 percent, outpacing provincial averages. Yan’an and Shaoshan experienced hotel booking increases of nearly 20 percent and 12 percent, respectively. Live-action performances, such as Great Victory at Loushan Pass in Zunyi and large-scale reenactments in Jinggangshan, further enhanced the interactive and educational dimensions of these visits, with ticket bookings rising 41 percent and 28 percent year-on-year, respectively. Other historically significant sites, like Liangdancheng in Sichuan, have also seen steadily growing tourist numbers, exceeding 20,000 visitors by mid-summer and expected to surpass 100,000 by the end of the season. This surge is not just a one-time effect of the anniversary but the strong patriotic mood it has created this year is likely to keep driving red tourism all around the year as many Chinese travelers visit revolutionary sites to express their national pride.
Golden Week’s cultural tourism extends beyond red tourism. Visitors engage with museums, cultural parks, heritage villages, and traditional festivals, often participating in interactive exhibits, workshops, and local craft demonstrations. According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism , this year more than 12,000 cultural activities will be held across the country, including over 300 large-scale light shows and more than 500 intangible cultural heritage exhibition events. This combination of leisure and cultural promotion along with seasonal events and thoughtfully designed tourist infrastructure ensures that cultural tourism is educational and economically impactful. Every year this holiday aligns most of the activities to national narratives that transforms Golden Week into a living experience of Chinese history and cultural identity.
Consumer and Market Boom
Golden Week is also a powerful engine for domestic consumption driving growth across multiple sectors. Retail and catering enterprises consistently see heightened activity during the holiday with 2024 figures showing a 4.5% year-on-year increase in sales, reflecting strong consumer confidence. The appliance sector, in particular, benefited from this surge, recording sales of over 55.7 billion yuan as households invested in home electronics and appliances.
E-commerce and digital platforms are another major beneficiary of Golden Week. Online retailers reported significant increases in both traffic and transaction volume, reflecting the broader trend of Chinese consumers embracing digital shopping for convenience and variety. For example, JD.com experienced a 20% growth in shoppers and double-digit growth in sales during the period, underscoring the role of online platforms in capturing holiday spending. It’s home appliance sales during the holiday increased 67 percent year on year.
The entertainment industry similarly capitalized on the holiday’s economic potential. Cinemas reported box office revenues of 2.1 billion yuan during Golden Week. Meanwhile, the real estate market also experienced a notable spike, with home sales increasing by 23% compared to the previous year. Analysts attributed this rise to government stimulus measures, such as lower down payments and reduced mortgage rates, which encouraged consumer activity and bolstered market sentiment.
Together, these trends illustrate how Golden Week functions as a nationwide economic accelerator. By stimulating retail, entertainment, real estate, and digital commerce simultaneously, the holiday not only reflects the strength of domestic consumer confidence but also contributes to the broader drive of China’s economy.
What Makes it Different
Golden Week is unparalleled in the world, not just for its scale but for the strategic orchestration behind it. Unlike most holidays which primarily serve as personal or cultural breaks, Golden Week transforms vacation into a coordinated national phenomenon. It is a carefully planned exercise in mass organization, aligning the movements and behavior of millions to achieve administrative objectives.
Globally, other major holidays and mass travel periods involve significant activity but operate in a largely distributed manner. In the United States, the 2023 Thanksgiving holiday saw 55.4 million Americans traveling, including 5.84 million domestic air passengers. While economically impactful, Thanksgiving is largely managed by private entities and state governments, without nationwide orchestration. Similarly, India’s Diwali in 2024 prompted Indian Railways to run 12,000 special trains for an additional 30 million passengers, and flight bookings surged by 85%. Despite government facilitation, the coordination remains less centralized than Golden Week. European summer vacations, too, involve massive travel and tourism—65% of EU residents took at least one personal trip in 2023, with Spain hosting over 85 million international visitors but management is mostly handled by individual countries and private operators rather than a national authority and over a period of an entire year rather than a specific week.
What truly distinguishes Golden Week is its state-directed orchestration and predictable, recurring timing. By concentrating travel and spending into a fixed period, the government uses time itself as a tool of governance and synchronizing behavior on a scale unmatched anywhere else. This integration of governance, economy, and social behavior makes Golden Week arguably the most strategically engineered holiday in the world.
Costs of Coordination
Golden Week, for all its spectacle and efficiency, is not without its downsides. The very orchestration that makes it a marvel of governance also comes with costs such as overcrowded trains and airports, packed tourist sites, soaring prices, and environmental strain on delicate ecosystems. Millions of travelers navigate long lines and crowded spaces, carrying with them fatigue and stress. This is a reminder that even the most carefully planned coordination has its limits. In this way, Golden Week showcases both the power and the paradox of China’s governance: a state able to move and shape the behavior of millions, yet dependent on those same citizens to endure the pressures it creates. It is a celebration of order and planning but also a vivid example that every defeat of strategy comes with some trade-offs.
Aditi Baral is a a Graduate from University of International Business and Economics, Beijing, China.
