Chinese New Years 2017 Explained

http://promocrunchpromocrunch.blogspot.ca/2013/01/promo-crunch-explains-chinese-new-years.html   Link to original post with new updates for 2017.

Each year the Chinese New Years disrupts business and lives like no other holiday on the planet. Imagine Christmas, Hannukah, Ramadan and Thanksgiving all rolled into  one 3 week long bender and you get CNY.

Factory Closures January 20th- Feb 10th 2017

Promo Crunch deals direct with factories in China to deliver unique promotional products. Each year the world’s largest holiday throws a wrench into business and trade around the world.

We are often asked to explain why….here goes.

The reason and facts about Chinese New Years are unknown to many of here in the West…so this blog post will give you a simple explanation which might help you to explain to your customers why the holiday is so disruptive.

1)…..China is the most populous country in the world with 1.25 BILLION people. That is 4 times the population of the USA living in about the same area as the USA. It is 40 times the population of Canada!

2) Most people in China work in TRADE ZONES….these are large industrial areas (such as Shenzhen) . A TRADE ZONE is where cities and areas were built 30-40 years ago by the Chinese Govt to concentrate certain types of industry in one area. Shenzhen is electronics.

3) 35 years ago Shenzhen had a population of 100,000 people, mostly farmers. Now, Shenzhen is a city of 25 million with 100 Million living in the surrounding area. The total area of Shenzhen is about the size of Southern California from Los Angeles to San Diego!

4) Most people living in Shenzhen (and the other major centers) have moved there from the country-side of rural China…… If you were to look at Miami on a USA map…or Newfoundland on a map of Canada…think of that as Shenzhen….then think of Seattle in the USA or Whitehorse in Canada and imagine that many people living in Shenzhen originally come from Seattle or Whitehorse (or somewhere along that route).

5) Come Chinese New Years…(or close to the actual holiday)….100’s of millions of people (yes 100’s of millions) get on the train or in their cars and go home……most cannot afford to fly home (domestic airlines are expensive) so they drive for 2-5 days or train for the 3-4 days….just to get home for New Years.

6) The best way to think of this is imagine EVERYONE in the USA leaves work and gets in their car or takes a train to travel a minimum of 500-1000 miles. That is a pretty close idea of the chaos!