A national internet survey claimed nearly 70 per cent of participants welcomed a controversial draft plan to scrap the week-long Labour Day holiday released by Beijing authorities last week, while experts questioned the study's methodology.
Sixty-seven per cent of 1.85 million online participants supported the proposal to eliminate the 'golden week' in May and replace it with separate traditional festivals, Xinhua reported yesterday.
But social policy and data experts argued the online survey format and the questionnaire's design may have skewed results.
'The government should be given credit for seeking public consultation but they're not being professional enough in the practice,' Tang Jun, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted as saying by China Youth Daily yesterday.
'There are some very noticeable flaws in the survey's methodology.'
Conducting the survey online would result in insufficient representation of the country's migrant workers, most of whom could not afford personal computers or even to use internet cafes, Mr Tang said. Cancellation of 'golden week' would hit many migrant workers, because it was the time when they were needed most in their hometowns.