The Chinese government on Sunday officially announced the
scrapping of one of the country's three "golden week" holidays and
introduced three new one-day public holidays.
The new national public holiday plan adds three traditional
festivals -- Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon-boat Festival and Mid Autumn
Festival -- to the list of public holidays.
The plan, which comes into effect on January 1, also increases
the total number of national holidays from 10 to 11 days.
Each of the three traditional festivals will be a one-day
holiday, according to the plan unveiled by the State Council, or
China's cabinet.
The Spring Festival remains a three-day public holiday, but it
will start one day earlier from the eve of the Lunar New Year,
China's most important traditional festival.
The May Day holiday is shortened from three days to one day,
while the three-day National Day holiday and one-day New Year
holiday remain unchanged.
The government will continue to move the weekend days adjacent
to a national holiday to form a longer holiday period so that
people will have three days or seven days off in a row.
The New Year Day, Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon-Boat Festival, May
Day, and Mid-Autumn Day then become holidays of three days each.
The Spring Festival holiday and National Day holiday remain
seven-day holidays.
An unnamed spokesman with the National Development and Reform
Commission (NDRC) said the new plan would uphold Chinese
traditions, make public holidays better distributed and, with more
people traveling on new public and paid holidays, ease
overcrowding?during the golden weeks.
The three week-long holidays -- Spring Festival, May Day holiday
and National Day holiday -- were introduced in 1999 to boost
domestic demand amid efforts to promote China's economic
growth.
But hundreds of millions of Chinese traveling at the same time
made transport and tourist destinations very crowded, making these
holidays far from an enjoyable experience.
Many netizens have complained that the revised May Day holiday
will make the remaining two golden weeks even more crowded and that
deprives people working far from their hometowns of the chance to
go back home for family gatherings.
They have even voiced their worry that a lot of company
employees will not be off on the newly-added traditional festival
holidays.
The spokesman said the revision could not satisfy all the
people, whose interests might vary, but did respect the opinion of
a majority.
Citing government figures, he said that 75 percent of the people
were in favor of the whole plan and that 60 percent of the netizens
agreed to the way the May Day holiday was revised.
Also on Sunday, the State Council announced regulations on paid
holidays, saying all employees of government agencies, enterprises
and public-service institutions were entitled to take paid holidays
after serving the same employer for one year.
Employees who have worked less than ten years will have five
paid days off a year, those who have worked for ten to 19 years
will have ten days and those who have worked for 20 years and above
would have 15 days.
National holidays and weekends will not be included as paid
holidays.
The regulations also stipulate that employees should have their
full daily salary guaranteed during paid holidays and that those
who keep working should be paid three times as much.
(Xinhua News Agency December 17, 2007)