Visitors walk along Yandaixiejie Street in downtown Beijing on Wednesday. Beijing municipal tourism authorities said on Wednesday that 4.91 million city sightseeing visits were made during the weeklong 2021 Spring Festival holidays. Photo: VCG

Chinese stocks rallied at the opening of Thursday, the first trading day of the stock market in the Year of the Ox, following the Spring Festival holidays from February 11 to 17 that was marked by stellar consumption. The full year is expected to continue on a bull track, analyst said.

The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.18 percent to 3,700, while the Shenzhen Composite Index went up 1.97 percent. The NASDAQ-style board ChiNext also posted a strong gain of 1.82 percent.

The blue-chip CSI300 index rose to 5,891.72, a record high.

Cinema shares surged. Beijing Culture jumped to its daily limit, while Wanda Film gained more than 6 percent.

As of 10 pm on Wednesday, the total box office revenues of the Spring Festival has exceeded 7.8 billion yuan ($1.2 billion), with total number of movie viewers reaching 160 million, a new record for the total box office and attendance during Spring Festival holidays in Chinese film history, data from ticket platform Dengta showed.

The combined sales of retail and catering enterprises in China rose 28.7 percent year-on-year to 821 billion yuan during the Spring Festival golden week, latest data from the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) showed Wednesday.

China's online sales exceeded 122 billion yuan during the same period, with online catering sales surging 135 percent compared with the Spring Festival holiday last year as more Chinese ordered ready-to-eat meals through e-commerce or online food delivery platforms.

Sales of products related to Lunar New Year's Eve dinners increased by 54.9 percent year-on-year during the holiday, according to MOFCOM.

"The eye-popping figures reflect huge consumption potential," said Yang Delong, chief economist at Shenzhen-based First Seafront Fund Management Co.

As an important occasion for family reunion, this year's holiday is different from previous ones as many places across China have encouraged residents and migrant workers to stay put for the festival to reduce personnel flow and curb the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The stay put order across the country throughout the holiday has driven consumption including surrounding tours, short-distance self-driving tours, in ski resorts parks, scenic spots, museums, cinemas, where traffic surged noticeably.

Yang forecast that the Chinese stock market continues to be on the bull run in the Year of the Ox. "But it will show slow and long-term trend, which is set to continue for a decade," he said.

The Year of the Rat in 2020 was a bullish year for the Chinese capital market, with the Shanghai index gaining 600 points.

Global Times