Chinese New Year 2022 and national public holidays in China

1. The day of the Chinese lunar New Year in 2022

Year	Chinese New Year day	Chinese zodiac sign
2021	February 12, 2021	Metal Ox
2022	February 1, 2022	Water Tiger
2023	January 22, 2023	Water Rabbit
2024	February 10, 2024	Wood Dragon
2025	January 29, 2025	Wood Snake
2026	February 17, 2026	Fire Horse

2. The official annual public holidays schedule for 2022 in China

On October 25, the Chinese State Council released the official dates of public holidays and annual vacations valid for the year 2022. They are valid for Mainland China.

The celebrated festivities	Official holidays calendar	Adjusted working days
New Year	January, Saturday 1 to Monday 3	-
2022 Chinese New Year	2022, Jan, Mon 31 to Feb, Sun 6	January, Sat 29 + Sunday 30
Qingming Festival	April, Sunday 3 to Tuesday 5	April, Saturday 2
Labor Day	April, Sat 30 to May, Wed 4	April, Sunday 24 + May, Saturday 7
Dragon Boat Festival	June, Friday 3 to Sunday 5	-
Mi-Autumn Festival	September, Saturday 10 to Monday 12	-
+ National Day	October, Saturday 1 to Friday	Oct, Saturday 8 + Sunday 9

In addition, here are the links to the leave and holiday 2022 calendars valid in Hong-kong and Taiwan.e.

 

3 . Impact of the Chinese New Year on your business relationship with China

The release of the official public holidays calendar does not mean that the employees of all companies go on vacation and return to work according to this exact schedule (from January 31 to February 6, 2022, i.e. 1 week).

Why? Every year, this is the only period when factories and manufacturing sites can close for several weeks. This is the only opportunity for workers to gather with their families, who often live (very) far from their workplace. Anticipate the production sites to close or to face a severe activity slowdown 1 to 2 weeks before the official New Year's date.

They often reopen 1 to 2 weeks after the end of the public holidays. The New Year means hundreds of millions of people traveling. Despite a well-developed nationwide transportation network, congestion remains inevitable during this period. The return of employees is gradual. As this period provides an opportunity for employees to receive their annual bonus before their vacation, it is common that some of them simply do not return. They change their employer, their job or move to another region.

Anticipate that the activity slow-down, stop and restart of your partners will strongly affect their production capacity. Typically, the impact of this period means production and delivery delays of 3 to 4 weeks or more. The situation of sharp cost rise of raw materials and the shortage of shipping containers in China further complicates the equation. In November 2021, the ocean shipping containers turnover rate is estimated to have increased from 60 days (before Covid-19) to 120 days. It means more 4 months to have a container to return to the same port of shipping.

During the Chinese New Year 2021, the Covid-19 context has confirmed and extended the gradual nature of the labor force departures and returns. The same situation can be expected for the Chinese New Year 2022. This year, in big cities, many employees and executives did not go back to their home province to gather with their families. They wanted to avoid the risks associated with painful transport conditions. Finally, they wanted to avoid quarantine periods that were quite unpredictable depending on the region.

• Facing numerous supply difficulties, for both price and production deadline, many importers are reorganizing their sourcing policy and their selection of Chinese suppliers and manufacturers.
  
  
• Enjoying sometimes a governmental support plan, some exporters took a chance to prospect new international markets. This included looking for sales opportunities with China distributors and importers.
  
  
• In order to better manage their stocks, some importers saw the opportunity to set up a logistics consolidation center nearby a Chinese port or in a Free Trade Zone. These facilities are either dedicated or shared.
  
  
• Some companies having the capacity to anticipate long term or timely opportunities decided to set up their own production or assembly workshop in China.
  
  

Since September 2021, the travel restrictions and the limitation of China visa issuance started to loosen a bit. Foreign residents can again come back with their valid resident visa. Nevertheless, China's zero Covid policy continues to prevail. We can expect the borders to reopen once the health risk assessment associated with vaccination of at least 80% of the population will be effective. Since October 2021, isolated outbreaks of the Covid Delta and Omicron variants appeared in several Chinese provinces. Populations in affected areas are promptly quarantined to contain the spread.

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