China’s Premier Pledges Growth Support as Holiday Spending Falls

(Bloomberg) — China’s Premier Li Keqiang called for more policies to drive up consumer spending as latest economic figures show a further plunge in travel and spending over a three-day public holiday amid tight Covid controls.

Tourism revenue declined 22.8% to 28.7 billion yuan ($4.1 billion) over the Mid-Autumn Festival from a year ago. Compared with pre-pandemic levels in 2019, revenue was down 39.4%, worse than last year’s 21.4% drop, according to figures from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The number of trips fell 16.7% to 73.4 million from the same period last year.