Coronavirus: Chinese consumer sentiment still reeling from pandemic, hitting hopes of ‘revenge shopping’
- More than half of Chinese households plan to increase savings and cut back on spending following the Covid-19 pandemic, a new survey shows
- Results show that consumer sentiment is still recovering from crisis and quash hopes of a quick rebound in the world’s second largest economy
More than half of Chinese households planned to increase their savings and cut back on spending after the outbreak was contained, while 40 per cent would maintain normal shopping patterns and 9 per cent would buy more, according to the survey of 28,000 people by researchers from China’s Southwestern University of Finance and Economics.
The study, which was released last week but conducted between late February and early March, surveyed users of Alipay, a popular mobile payment application developed by e-commerce company Alibaba, which also owns the South China Morning Post.
The survey results, which suggest Chinese are reluctant to spend even as the pandemic is brought under control, chimes with financial data published by the People’s Bank of China earlier this month.
In the first quarter, household savings rose 6.47 trillion yuan (US$913.4 billion), up 6.6 per cent from a year earlier and roughly equivalent to 70 billion yuan flowing into savings accounts every day during the period.