A source of light

After years of speculation, China’s central government has decreed that the national public holiday schedule is to be reformed from calendar year 2008. A call for public comment on a proposed schedule was made some weeks back, and although there has been no official announcement as to the results (yet), we have it on good authority that the following schedule will apply, nationwide and for all people, from January 1st, 2008:

Western New Year
3 days vacation (1-Jan-2008 through 3-Jan-2008)

Chinese New Year (aka “Spring Festival”)
7 days vacation (6-Feb-2008 through 12-Feb-2008)

Grave Sweeping Day
3 days vacation (4-Apr-2008 through 6-Apr-2008)

International Socialist Workers’ Day (aka “May Day”)
3 days vacation (1-May-2008 through 3-May-2008)

Dragon Boat Festival
3 days vacation (8-Jun-2008 through 10-Jun-2008)

Mid-Autumn Festival
3 days vacation (14-Sep-2008 through 16-Sep-2008)

China National Day
7 days vacation (1-Oct-2008 through 7-Oct-2008)

Certain pundits have been predicting full flexibility of vacation time for workers. It seems that as fast as China is reforming, the national economy is not quite ready for such a move, as yet.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 18th, 2007 at 6:01 pm and is filed under China Life, HR. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.