As the Spring Festival is just around the corner, China's New Year economy continues to heat up, with domestic demand including New Year goods shopping, pre-holiday travel and dining reservations driving the rise in consumption enthusiasm. Analysts said that along with the implementation of multiple policies and measures to boost consumption, this year's Spring Festival is expected to unleash greater spending potential, setting a good start for the consumer market throughout the year.

On Sunday, the 30th Old Beijing New Year Goods Fair in Chaoyang district in Beijing was crowded with consumers buying New Year decorations, fresh fruits, local specialties, intangible cultural heritage products and imported goods.

A Beijing resident surnamed Liu carried several shopping bags with food and Spring Festival couplets and lanterns. He told the Global Times that at the fair, he can not only buy all his Spring Festival goods but also relive the fun of going to street fairs in his childhood.

Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com data shows that since the launch of the New Year Goods Festival on January 25, the search volume related to New Year goods increased by more than fourfold year-on-year. Red apparel, horse-themed ornaments, decorations with the Chinese character fu, and various gift boxes were highly favored in the first week of the festival.

Citrus fruit is a kind of fruit that is popular in some regions across China during the Spring Festival. The fruit has the widest distribution and the largest production scale in Guilin, South China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. According to data that Lalamove, a leading domestic intra-city freight platform, sent to the Global Times on Sunday, orders in Guilin surged by 48.5 percent year-on-year between October and December.

Hot pot chain Haidilao told the Global Times on Sunday that bookings for group reunion dinners during the Spring Festival holiday, which runs from February 15-23, have been increasing rapidly. To better accommodate the demand for reunion dinners during the holiday, more than 1,000 Haidilao stores will operate normally on New Year's Eve, and more than 1,200 stores will open for business on Lunar New Year's Day.

The Spring Festival, the most important traditional holiday in China, is generally a peak season for domestic consumption, driven by family reunions, dining, entertainment, travel and gift purchases. Ahead of the holiday, China has rolled out multiple policies to further stimulate domestic demand.

From February 15-23, China will launch a special shopping campaign to boost consumption, enrich cultural life and stimulate market vitality, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) announced recently.

Measures will include promoting festive dining and reunion banquets, offering discounts on home appliances and home renovation, increasing transport capacity, organizing nationwide cultural and tourism consumption events, and rolling out shopping promotions in major commercial districts and discounts for cinema tickets, according to an action plan jointly issued by the MOFCOM and eight other government departments.

To stimulate consumption during the Spring Festival holiday, localities have also rushed to announce a variety of policy measures. For example, the city of Jining in East China's Shandong Province recently adopted a method of calculating car subsidies based on the proportion of the new vehicle's selling price, aiming to more precisely meet the car purchase needs of different consumers and spark the vitality of the automobile consumption market.

"This year, Spring Festival consumption promotion activities across the country feature distinct characteristics of government-led, multi-party collaboration, and full coverage. The core lies in a dual-driven mechanism of policy and activity, while deeply integrating diverse business models so as to stimulate consumption potential, optimize consumption supply, and create a strong festive atmosphere," Zhang Yi, CEO of the iiMedia Research Institute, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"Domestic demand remains an important driver of economic growth, and the measures rolled out by the government agencies to boost consumer spending during the Spring Festival holiday will further unlock consumption potential and kick off a good start for the country's consumption market throughout 2026," Zhang said.

China's new consumption - consumption behaviors and patterns formed by new technologies, new business formats and new models - has attracted widespread attention over the past year, bringing new growth drivers to the consumption sector. Representing emerging consumption trends, new consumption injects fresh vitality into the sector, Yang Delong, chief economist at Shenzhen-based First Seafront Fund, told the Global Times on Sunday.

"Looking ahead into 2026, along with the improvement of China's economic structure, 'Made in China' is continuously transitioning toward 'China smart manufacturing' and 'China brands.' An increasingly mature landscape of new consumption is taking shape, weaving a new picture of high-quality economic development for China," Yang said.