Economic Performance during China's National Day: Recovery in Travel and Consumption, Pressure on Real Estate and Foreign Trade|Moomoo research

Recently, the Chinese capital market has experienced significant turbulence, and the current state of the economy is increasingly capturing the attention of the capital market. We can take a look back at the economic data performance during China's National Day holiday.

Travel Section: Travel Enthusiasm Rebounds, Prices Affordable
During the National Day holiday, people's enthusiasm for travel has slightly increased. The inter-regional population flow grew by 2.8% compared to the same period last year, and it was even 24% higher than the same period in 2019 before the pandemic. The growth in subway passenger volume in second-tier cities was particularly notable, reaching 15.3%, thanks to more tourism activities.
International flights are also gradually recovering, with the number of international flights approaching 83% of the same period in 2019, while regional routes have recovered to 72%. However, despite the increase in flight numbers, airfares have decreased significantly compared to last year, with domestic and international ticket prices dropping by 23% and 30.4%, respectively.

Consumption Section: Rapid Recovery in Tourism, Film Market Cooling
The Chinese tourism market has performed remarkably well, with several provinces seeing year-on-year growth in both tourist numbers and revenue. For instance, provinces such as Sichuan, Guangdong, and Heilongjiang have experienced double-digit growth in visitor numbers. Additionally, data from Meituan shows significant increases in dine-in and lifestyle service consumption. However, the film box office performance has been disappointing, with total box office revenue for National Day films expected to be only 2.12 billion yuan, marking a 22% decrease from the same period last year.

Real Estate Section: Decline in New Home Sales Narrows
Since the Politburo meeting at the end of September, several cities have introduced new real estate policies. During the National Day holiday, although new home sales continued to decline, the rate of decline has narrowed. Statistics show that the average daily transaction area for new homes in 61 sample cities fell by 29% compared to the same period last year, but this figure represents a decrease of 2.6 percentage points compared to the decline in September.

Freight Section: Weakening Foreign Trade Demand
While the throughput of goods and containers at ports has increased, the growth rate is lower than last month. The situation for rail and road freight is also not optimistic, particularly for road freight, which has seen a lower growth rate compared to last month. This reflects a current weakening in foreign trade demand.

Overall, this National Day holiday in China has shown some positive changes in the market but also faces challenges. This has led the market to anticipate subsequent stimulus policies even more keenly. From the perspective of market dynamics, the declining economic data is likely to increase the probability of more stimulus policies being introduced, which could help enhance the market's risk appetite.