China News Service, Beijing, February 12 (Reporter Xie Yiguan) The nine-day Spring Festival holiday is approaching, and large gatherings everywhere are already crowded. Special snacks, intangible cultural heritage handicrafts, and New Year gift boxes are laid out, forming a vivid picture of New Year customs.
Coinciding with the "longest in history" Spring Festival holiday, nine departments including the Ministry of Commerce have recently jointly launched the 2026 "Tesco New Year" special Spring Festival event. A New Year consumption feast that is interconnected across the region and enjoyed by all the people is ready.
When consumption increases during the Spring Festival, the popularity of the festival will also be transformed into real wealth, injecting a strong stream of warmth into the first year of the "15th Five-Year Plan".
On January 22, the 30th Old Beijing New Year Goods Fair opened at the Beijing National Agricultural Exhibition Hall. Photo by China News Service reporter Wang Ziru
According to the plan, three major gift packages will be presented in this event to effectively stimulate people's willingness to consume and dare to consume.
The first step is to replace the old with the new. The first batch of 62.5 billion yuan in state subsidy funds across the country has been allocated to commerce departments in various regions, and various regions will be guided to increase subsidies during the Spring Festival holiday.
The second level is the prize invoice. The Ministry of Commerce, the Ministry of Finance, and the State Administration of Taxation have decided to launch pilot invoices with prizes in 50 cities. The scale of prizes during the nine-day Spring Festival holiday alone will exceed 1 billion.
The third level is financial support. The People's Bank of China and the State Administration of Financial Supervision will guide financial institutions, payment institutions and merchants to launch various forms of "Tesco New Year" preferential measures, covering consumption scenarios in multiple fields such as air tickets, hotels, food and beverages, and attraction tickets.
This set of policy packages not only lowers residents’ consumption threshold, but also injects confidence into market entities and unleashes full sincerity.
Booming consumption is also inseparable from scene innovation and experience upgrades.
This is the key to making people willing and happy to consume.
This special Spring Festival event closely follows the six dimensions of "good food, good housing, good travel, good travel, good shopping, and good fun" to promote the diversified integration of consumption scenarios, allowing festive moments to resonate with market vitality at a high frequency, adding impetus to high-quality economic development.
On the evening of February 11, in Chengdu, Sichuan, the "Cute Generals Celebrate New Year" lantern group was displayed at a large temple fair. Photo by China News Service reporter Anyuan
For example, activities such as “Travel with the Movie”, “Appreciate the Intangible Cultural Heritage with the Movie” and “Travel with the Intangible Cultural Heritage” skillfully transform cultural IP into perceivable and experienceable travel routes, achieving a two-way journey of cultural dissemination and consumption improvement.
Another example is that county areas hold special New Year goods fairs and organize local products to enter business districts, scenic spots, and communities. This not only broadens the sales channels of agricultural products, but also enriches urban consumer supply, truly realizing the positive interaction between urban and rural consumption, and activating the consumption potential of counties.
Cross-border integration attempts such as "Tesco New Year Ticket Stub Benefits" provide free scenic spot tickets for hotel stays, movie viewing credits for dining at restaurants, taxi coupons for watching performances, etc., which connect typical consumption scenes during the Spring Festival, greatly extending the consumption chain and enhancing the sense of consumption gain.
When consumption thrives, the economy thrives. In 2025, the total retail sales of consumer goods will exceed the 50 trillion yuan mark for the first time, and the final contribution rate of consumer spending to economic growth will reach 52%, an increase of 5 percentage points from the previous year.
When consumption booms during the Spring Festival, it will also activate a pool of spring water in the economy.
The deeper significance of this New Year consumption feast goes beyond the growth of transaction numbers. It also carries the multiple values of cultural inheritance, emotional connection, openness and win-win.
Through temple fairs, lantern festivals, intangible cultural heritage performances, etc. throughout urban and rural areas, the event allows traditional culture to be displayed, inherited and innovated in consumption scenarios; consumption scenarios such as reunion banquets, New Year’s Eve dinners, family outings, etc. build bridges for intergenerational communication, allowing family ties to continue and heat up during festival consumption.
At the same time, the event embraces the world with an open attitude. By improving the payment environment, releasing multilingual Spring Festival folk maps, increasing international flight capacity, and providing "civil aviation + cultural tourism" combined products for inbound tourism, it warmly welcomes friends from all over the world to "celebrate the Chinese New Year as the locals do", making the unique charm of the Chinese Spring Festival a shared experience for the world, which not only promotes consumption, but also further enhances the international influence of the Spring Festival.
At present, various places have also launched a variety of special Spring Festival activities based on local characteristics, and jointly played this New Year consumption concerto.
From the smiling faces at the market to the surging crowds in urban and rural areas across the country; from affordable consumption subsidies to innovative consumption scenarios, consumption will also be "booming" during this Spring Festival. (over)
