China’s Hainan sees surge in coronavirus-related binge shopping as pandemic kills overseas travel

Since Beijing outlined plans to turn Hainan into a free-trade port, Chinese have flocked to the island to buy duty-free goods

China’s government has started to eliminate tariffs throughout the island and it now accounts for 25 per cent of the duty-free market

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Tourists shop at a duty-free shopping centre in Sanya City in China’s Hainan Province. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 3:15pm, 1 Mar 2021Updated: 4:53pm, 1 Mar 2021

At the end of last year, President Xi Jinping said Hainan, China’s southernmost island province, was rapidly developing into a duty-free port – an indication that his “dual circulation” economic strategy was already paying dividends.

The island is being promoted as somewhere Chinese who are unable to travel overseas because of the coronavirus pandemic can head for binge shopping, making it a model for the expansion of domestic demand linked to the world economy that Xi hopes to achieve in the future.

Known by locals as “China’s Hawaii,” the island, roughly the size of Kyushu in southwestern Japan, has beaches for swimming and surfing, but the main attraction is the Sanya International Duty-Free Shopping Complex, where crowds bustle to find the best deals.

On New Year’s Day, shoppers queued at outlets throughout the duty-free complex – more than 2-1/2 times larger than the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium – in search of high-end jewellery, cosmetics, fashion and more.

Li Wei, 52, a car dealer from the eastern Chinese province of Anhui, said he spent over 30,000 yuan (US$4,600) on a Swiss watch, revealing that his “total budget was between 50,000 to 60,000 yuan.”

Shoppers like Zhang Aoli, 45, who works for a Shanghai consulting company, come ready to shell out big cash on luxury brands. “If not for Covid-19 I would have been spending my time in the Maldives or Bali,” Zhang said after purchasing several pricey articles of clothing.

Hainan had already developed into a resort island, but Xi laid out a new economic strategy in June 2020, calling for the province to become “a high-level free port with strong international influence” by 2050.