As China enjoys a five-day public holiday, debate about the country’s unusual ‘compensatory working day’ system has once again resurfaced online, so what is it exactly?

China is currently in the middle of a public holiday to mark Labor Day on 1 May. It’s a five-day break from work for many Chinese people – or is it? Two days of the holiday fall on Saturday and Sunday, while the other two days must be made up by working weekend days on either side of the holiday.

This practice of compensatory working days, known as 调休 tiaoxiu in Chinese, allows for longer blocks of time off: seven days for Spring Festival, five for Labor Day and seven for National Day in October. China has 11 official public holidays, but this year’s public holiday calendar has a bumper 28 days of holiday, including weekends, balanced with eight weekend working days.

Private companies in China have the right to set their own schedules, i.e., to ignore compensatory working days, as long as the official holiday calendar is maintained. Many companies will allow employees to work from home on these days or just be available by phone/email to outside clients.

The system dates back to 1999 when it was brought in to stimulate consumption in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Certainly, the longer holidays are consumption hotspots; the 2023 National Day Holiday generated RMB 753.43 billion (£83.36 billion) in tourism revenue. Moreover, they offer valuable time off for Chinese employees with minimal statutory annual leave – just five days for employees that have been working for less than 10 years (compared to 28 days for full-time employees in the UK).

However, the compensatory working days have attracted criticism in recent years. Reporting on the Labor Day holiday, CNN noted that the Weibo hashtags “you should not pretend not to hear voices opposing the tiaoxiu policy” and “tiaoxiu policy for May Day” attracted more than 560 million views online.

Many feel cheated by the system, arguing that a holiday isn’t a holiday if you have to earn it back by working on a Saturday or Sunday. Others point out that the six-day work weeks created by the system are physically and mentally demanding, making people less productive. People have also complained that the spikes in transport and hotel prices caused by the compressed holiday schedules make travel unappealing, and that making the holiday system more flexible would spread spending across the year, benefitting the economy.

The criticism of the compensatory working days system reflects a wider pushback against China’s fast-paced job market, in which working long hours and taking few holidays were traditionally seen as ways to get ahead. Some younger Chinese people are swapping high-pressure white-collar jobs for self-employment or even jobs like farming, while others are simply ‘quiet quitting’.

While some Chinese media outlets have reported that various government departments have met to discuss China’s current public holiday system in recent years, any change would require massive cross-governmental coordination and is unlikely to happen quickly.

Photo by K Hsu on Unsplash