Editor's Note:
TheMK sports Korea Spring Festival of the Year of the Snake is about two weeks away. Now inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list, 2025 marks both the first such heritage-tagged Spring Festival and the Year of the Snake. As a new wave of consumption fervor sweeps the nation, China is gathering momentum for an accelerated recovery in 2025. The eight-day holidays are expected to become an "unprecedented" peak season for consumption amid various policies to spur holiday spending. What opportunities will the Spring Festival create for the world? This is one of a series of six articles displaying the market potential of the world's second-largest economy.

Residents browse products imported from over 10 countries and regions in an import shop in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province on January 4, 2025. Photo: VCG

A growing list of imported goodies have entered China as the country is going to celebrate the Spring Festival which falls on January 29 when family members flock to home and sit together for the annual reunion. 

Traditionally, the Spring Festival celebrations last for nearly a month, starting from the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month until the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the first lunar month.  Beginning on the 23rd day of the 12th lunar month, people start preparing for Chinese New Year's Eve by cleaning the house, putting on red couplets on the door, and starting to make special purchases for the Chinese Lunar New Year.

As the most important festival rapidly approaches, e-commerce platforms and brick-and-mortar stores in the country are set to launch a wide variety of shopping events where high-quality products, including imported goods, are put on sale. 

Special purchases
From more than 20,000 kilometers away, cherries from Chile traveled by ships and airplanes to reach Chinese consumers and Brazilian nuts harvested from the Amazon Rainforest are shipped to China, Tmall Global, a major e-commerce platform, said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Thursday, which was the 20-day countdown to the Spring Festival.

Currently, imported goods for the celebration of the Chinese Lunar New Year from more than 80 countries are enlisted on Tmall Global for Chinese consumers to select and purchase. 

Imported food products, such as Norwegian salmon, South American white shrimp, Canadian sea cucumbers, Russian king crab, Thai tiger prawns, Spanish Black Iberian pork and Australian Angus ribeye steaks, have gained rising popularity among Chinese consumers, adding more flavors of the Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve feast, Tmall Global said.

Now, a shopping festival for the Lunar New Year is being held at the Yiwu Imported Commodities Mall in East China's Zhejiang Province, which exhibited about 150,000 imported products from more than 100 countries and regions, according to CCTV, the state broadcaster.

An international cargo train carrying 24 tons of cooked frozen shrimp from Thailand arrived at Kunming, capital city of Southwest China's Yunnan Province, on January 3, representing the first seafood shipment facilitated by the China-Laos Railway, China Railway Group, the operator of the route, said in a statement sent to the Global Times. The cooked frozen shrimp will serve as special purchases to enrich the Spring Festival table, the company said.

China Railway Group is stepping up efforts to achieve normalized transportation of imported aquatic products from Southeast Asia, an official at the cargo department of China's Railway's Kunming branch told the Global Times. Increasingly, durian, mangosteen and other tropical fruits imported from Southeast Asia are being transported to China through the China-Laos Railway. 

In Northwest China's Xi'an city, a shopping carnival for Spring Festival special purchases kicked off on Friday which will last until January 26. The event is expected to attract about 200,000 visitors and can drive consumption of about 20 million yuan ($2.7 million), according to local media reports.

Also, imported products such as candy from Russia, beer and floor from Kazakhstan and wine from Georgia have arrived in Xi'an through China-Europe Railway Express freight service.

Instead of well-known wine brands, Chinese young consumers are now opting for "niche" wine products to express individuality, a Beijing-based wine importer surnamed Liu told the Global Times on Friday, adding that he has been focusing on importing wine from Central and Eastern Europe to China.

Apart from food, a string of imported products have gained increasing popularity among Chinese consumers.

E-commerce platform JD.com launched an online shopping event, celebrating the Chinese Lunar New Year with globally known brands, such as Coach, Armani, Hermes, Apple, Lego, Dyson, Lafite and Suntory, providing Chinese consumers with more choices, in addition to drinks and food.

Jiangsu Agri-Future Co, an agriculture and forestry company recently imported 1,191 bonsai plants to prepare for the Spring Festival, according to a news release published by the Nanjing customs in East China's Jiangsu Province on December 23, 2024.

"In recent years, we have observed an increasing buyer inclination toward 'novel' bonsai products, with exotic and unique varieties gaining more popularity. To meet the changing market, we have shifted our focus to imported overseas products that are more distinctive," Ma Shuangyang, general manager at the agriculture and forestry company, said.

Strong logistics
China's well-developed logistics system and increasingly efficient customs clearance procedure have greatly helped imported products, especially fresh food, Chinese logistical practitioners noted.

For example, the expedient transportation of cooked frozen shrimp from Thailand was made possible through the fast integration of the China-Laos Railway and a network of expressways linking Southeast Asia and China.

The frozen shrimp started its journey in Thailand, made its way to Vientiane, capital of Laos by road, and then was loaded onto the China-Laos Railway's international freight train for direct delivery to Kunming, said China Railway. The integrated rail and road transport network, compared to traditional sea and road transport, has reduced the transportation time by 14 days, effectively lowering transportation costs.

Now, Chinese importers, e-commerce platforms, customs, and government officials are seeking more innovative logistical means to boost the Spring Festival consumption.

According to the monitoring of China's major e-commerce platforms by the Ministry of Commerce, during 2024 Spring Festival holidays, Chinese mainland online retail sales reached 1.2 trillion yuan in value, up by 9 percent from a year earlier. It is estimated that Chinese households could spend more on imported products during 2025 Spring Festival shopping spree.