China’s May Day Holiday Consumption Falls Below Pre-Pandemic Levels, Movie Box Office Plunges by 51.27%

During the 2025 May Day holiday, many tourists in China chose not to spend. Vendors across various regions lamented, “There are lots of people, but they’re not buying.” The image shows street scenes in Shanghai during the holiday (video screenshot).

[People News] Under the shadow of the U.S.-China tariff war, this year’s May Day holiday has been seen as a barometer of Chinese consumer confidence. Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday (May 5) that, according to the Ministry of Commerce, sales at key retail and dining enterprises rose 6.3% year-on-year. However, other reports indicate that per capita holiday spending still lags behind pre-pandemic 2019 levels, and box office revenues have been “halved.”

According to Radio Free Asia, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism announced on Tuesday (May 6) that the five-day holiday saw 314 million domestic trips—a 6.4% increase from last year—and total domestic tourism spending reached 180.269 billion yuan (RMB), up 8% year-on-year.

However, Reuters reported that official data shows per capita spending increased only 1.5% to 574.1 yuan, still lower than the 603.4 yuan figure in 2019 before the COVID outbreak. The report pointed out that amid sluggish economic growth and a continuing real estate crisis, consumption in the world’s second-largest economy is under pressure, and the U.S.-China trade war will only intensify that strain.

Meanwhile, according to data from Alibaba Pictures’ distribution platform “Beacon,” as of 9 p.m. on Monday, holiday box office revenue was 744 million yuan, less than half of last year’s 1.527 billion yuan, representing a 51.27% decline. Total moviegoers fell to 18.826 million, down 50.15% from last year’s 37.77 million. CCTV News reported that the top three films were Dumpling Queen, Gold Hunter: Game, and Princess Mononoke.

This year’s May Day box office even failed to surpass that of 2019, when, despite only a 4-day holiday, total box office revenue exceeded 1.5 billion yuan. Many viewers said this year’s poor turnout was due to a lack of good films: “I only watched Nezha 2 during the break, no interest in anything else.” Another netizen commented, “Unbelievable! I went to the cinema last night [May 4], there wasn’t even a ticket checker—I just walked in and sat down.” It seems that after Nezha 2, another “movie winter” has arrived.

Hundreds of Sensitive Data Sets Disappear

In addition, media outlets have discovered that faced with poor economic performance, the Chinese authorities have stopped releasing hundreds of previously routine data sets in recent years, making it increasingly difficult for outsiders to assess the true state of the Chinese economy.

The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “How Bad Is China’s Economy? The Data We Need Is Disappearing,” noting that the missing data includes land sales, foreign investment, unemployment rates, business confidence indices, the number of cremations, and even soy sauce production. In most cases, government agencies gave no explanation. For example, when asked why youth unemployment data was no longer released, the National Bureau of Statistics simply said, “The ministry that provided the data has stopped sharing it.”

The report explained that maintaining an image of stability is crucial for the Chinese Communist Party, especially at a time when many in the middle class are increasingly anxious about the future, and the outlook for U.S.-China relations is uncertain. The “disappeared” data sets typically involve areas that are politically sensitive or problematic for the regime, such as real estate, unemployment, and capital flows.

Some data is still publicly available, but access has become more restricted. In 2021, the government passed a law requiring data providers to limit certain information to within China’s borders, including business registration records and satellite imagery. One economist at a foreign bank in Hong Kong said that due to this law, he now must travel to nearby Shenzhen every weekend just to download the relevant data.