Research note: Why gold is so stronghold, revealing the mechanism of China’s golden week holiday system

Abstract

This research note employs discourse analysis to investigate the mechanism of China’s golden week holiday system, a unique policy regimen impacting the leisure lives of 1.4 billion Chinese citizens five times a year. It was revealed by the research results that the ideological paradigms of state control over leisure and emphasis on productivity derived from orthodox Marist articulations, as well as centralised policy planning and integration of traditional Chinese cultural values of naturalised Marxist theories in China, have been underpinning this holiday system. The authors make the cautionary prediction of the stability of this system in the near future, in the light of the satisfactory policy outcomes it has yielded for the Chinese authorities. Implications of this note for leisure researchers and practitioners are also addressed.

Keywords:

• Golden week holiday system
• ideological underpinning
• leisure policy
• policy stability
• China