Golden Week (China)

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This phrase also refers to Golden Week (Japan)

Golden Week (黄金周) in the mainland of the People's Republic of China is the name given to three annual 7-day national holidays, implemented in 2000:^[1]

The "Spring Festival (or Chinese Lunar New Year) Golden Week" begins in January or February.
The "Labour Day Golden Week" begins on May 1st (May Day).
The "National Day Golden Week" begins on October 1st.

Three days paid holiday are given, and the surrounding weekends are re-arranged so that workers in Chinese companies always have seven continuous days of holiday. These national holidays were first started by the government for PRC's National Day in 1999 and are primarily intended to help expand the domestic tourism market and improve the national standard of living, as well as allowing people to make long-distance family visits. The Golden Weeks are consequently periods of greatly heightened travel activity.

1 Controversy
2 External links
3 See also
4 References

[edit] Controversy

In 2004, there were calls for the Golden Week holidays to be cut back, due to their disruption of the regular economy.

In 2006, delegates to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference brought up proposals to cancel both the National Day and May Day Golden Weeks, arguing that the holidays have not achieved significant results in promoting internal consumption, which was the original intention for these long holiday weeks.^[2] Rather, the delegates said, these Golden Weeks have disrupted people's regular 5-day weekly schedule and is increasingly impeding commerce and international trade, as many key government agencies, especially those related to customs, tax/tariff collection, and legal affairs, are shut down for seven days. Instead, they proposed, these days off should be spread out to other traditional holidays not currently recognized as public holidays, including Mid-Autumn Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, and Qingming Festival. The proposal, if passed into law, would shorten the Golden Weeks into long weekends (3 days).

According to an article in China Daily, Golden Weeks will be sustained as weekly holidays through 2007.