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A new public holiday to encourage consumer spending, a crackdown on overtime work in the hope of boosting the birth rate and $100bn in consumption vouchers are some of the proposals being aired at China’s biggest political pageant this week.
The annual eight-day extravaganza, known as the “two sessions”, will kick off on Wednesday with the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a “united front” advisory body. A meeting of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress, follows on Thursday.
CPPCC members float hundreds of proposals during the conference — among them the new public holiday and restrictions on overtime hours to relieve exhausted workers — in hopes of catching the attention of China’s top policymakers.
More bread-and-butter policies and legislation will be covered by the NPC, where China’s second-ranked leader Li Qiang will announce this year’s GDP growth target on Thursday as part of his annual “work report” for the economy.
China is also expected to formally release its next five-year plan, a longer-term economic and social blueprint laying out Beijing’s ambitions to become the supreme technological superpower.
“The gatherings are . . . a media spectacle, offering a high-profile forum for political elites to discuss headline policy issues,” Neil Thomas and Lobsang Tsering from the Asia Society wrote in a paper, though they noted that “space for internal debate has narrowed considerably” under Xi Jinping, who became China’s leader in 2012.
Although the meetings are mainly political theatre for Communist party hierarchy to push through their pre-planned agenda, membership in the two bodies is highly coveted.
Delegates ranging from entrepreneurs and academics to officials and professionals consider it a success if their proposals elicit a formal response from the political leadership or are featured in internal party publications.
China’s wealthiest are well represented among the bodies’ roughly 5,000 members. About 85 people with Rmb5bn ($725mn) or more in personal wealth were NPC and CPPCC members last year, according to research firm Hurun.
The CPPCC is also an important part of China’s “united front”, the party’s system to influence wider society at home and abroad, and offers a rare national platform for members to promote their policy ideas.
In the past, ideas have ranged from lowering the marriage age to instituting sex education in kindergartens and allowing single women to freeze their eggs — all aimed at countering China’s population decline.
This year, amid growing pressure in China to strengthen weak household consumption stemming from a years-long property crisis and ageing demographics, many proposals centre on how to get people spending and having more babies.
CPPCC member Lu Ming, a university economics professor and adviser to the Shanghai municipal government, said limits on overtime also needed to be enforced. Chinese tech companies are known for a “996” work culture, in which employees work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.
Lu added that workers were also saddled with “invisible overtime”, with people working on digital devices after hours.
“Excessive overtime has a significant impact on employees’ physical and mental health, quality of life, willingness to have children and prospects for marriage,” Lu told Shanghai-based Dragon TV.
He suggested the government implement a new autumn public holiday to encourage parents to take more time off with their children.
Liu Yonghao, the founder of New Hope, China’s biggest animal feed producer, and another CPPCC member proposed giving every Chinese citizen a Rmb500 consumption voucher.
Amounting to a total cash injection of Rmb700bn, this would stimulate 14mn service sector jobs and total expenditure of Rmb2tn nationwide, he estimated.
Existing government stimulus programmes include subsidies for households to replace appliances and support for large companies but not for small businesses.
“Boosting consumption is the top priority for 2026,” he said, adding that subsidies should benefit “self-employed individuals, small shops and farmers’ markets at the grassroots level”.
