CHINA'S lunar new year celebrations are a messy affair, leaving streets covered with paper scraps, burnt-out boxes and other remnants of the fireworks that fill the nights with countless sleep-banishing explosions. This year’s holiday lasts until the Lantern Festival on February 9th, but already the country’s statisticians are sifting through the debris, trying to determine how Chinese consumers are responding to the global economic crisis.
In Beijing on the first day of the holiday, which began on January 26th (most urban employees were back at work on February 2nd), 69 tonnes of firework scraps were collected from the previous night’s celebrations, up 14 tonnes on the equivalent night a year ago. Reports said that 378,000 boxes of fireworks had been sold in the city by the fifth day of the festivities, 2% more than the year before. Not bad, perhaps, considering a modest-sized box can cost over 100 yuan ($15).
The People’s Daily, said fireworks in China were “hot sellers” during the holiday. This was one example of what it called the “exuberant consumption of residents” during the festival. This “fiery” retail scene was a pleasing sign that China was succeeding in its efforts to boost domestic demand, it said—just what the authorities want in order to soften the blow of much-reduced demand for the country’s exports.
The fireworks statistics are not as convincing a sign of public confidence as the People’s Daily would like to believe. Firework sellers at five retail outlets (in Beijing fireworks are sold from tents pitched in the streets just before the festival and dismantled afterwards) told The Economist that sales were down between 20% and 40% by value this year. They blamed the financial crisis and a growing tendency among thrifty Beijing citizens to stock up on cheaper (and louder) fireworks sold by unregulated vendors in the neighbouring province of Hebei. Profits, they said, had been squeezed.
Some Chinese newspapers say that wholesalers, mindful of the economic slowdown, have resisted boosting firework prices this year despite a big increase in ex-factory prices caused by rising production costs early last year.