"During the week, there were 203m tourists (up 15.1% yoy) and tourism income totaled RMB117.1bn (up 15.4% yoy); 440mn passengers travelled by public transportation (up 13.7% yoy)," wrote BofA Merrill Lynch Economists Xiaojia Zhi and Ting Lu. "These strong holiday sales data reflects that China’s ordinary consumers have remained confident in China’s economic fundamentals and their wealth outlook, in our view."

This, however, was the slowest pace of growth since 2009, reports Bloomberg.

This deceleration has been attributable to the Chinese government's demands for a cutback in luxury and wasteful spending. Earlier this month, luxury commercials were banned in an effort to curb corrupt gift-giving.