Editor’s Note: Chinese people are embracing the digital yuan with a positive attitude. Thanks to the promotion of banking institutions, internet companies, and retail terminals, digital yuan now can be used in a wider range of scenarios.

1. Tourism in China evolves, promising new experiences

COVID has hurt tourism and related sectors badly and caused job losses, but there's a silver lining to that dark cloud: micro-tourism or micro-vacations.

Across China, this emerging trend has people spending their spare time on short-distance travel. People drive two to three hours to a nearby destination to stay for two to three days, usually on weekends or during short holidays.

This mode fits in well with the COVID situation that does not encourage conventional vacations, which require elaborate planning, much longer travel time, higher expenses, and longer time like a week or more. In contrast, a micro-vacation needs little planning and relatively less time, and is also less costly.

2. Weight of yuan raised as a global currency

The International Monetary Fund's decision to raise the renminbi's weight in a key global reserve asset marked the steady progress of the renminbi's internationalization, reflecting the currency's growing global heft and the achievement of China's financial opening-up, industry experts said on Sunday.

In the latest valuation review of the Special Drawing Right－an international reserve asset also known as the SDR, the IMF raised the weight of the renminbi in the basket of currencies that make up the SDR by 1.36 percentage points to 12.28 percent, the People's Bank of China, the nation's central bank, said on Sunday.

3. China's gaming companies look across the seas to boost their revenue

 (Photo/Xinhua)

Among China's top 20 most profitable gaming companies, six saw declines in their revenue and 11 registered drops in net profit last year, Chinese financial media outlet Yicai reported Wednesday. Faced with a timid domestic market, some are expanding their global reach to seek out new development.

In 2021, China's gaming market raked in 296.5 billion yuan in sales revenue, up 6.4 percent year-on-year, a sharp reduction from the previous year's 20.7 percent growth, according to an industry report released by the Game Publishing Committee of the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association.

Faced with slower growth in the domestic market, Chinese gaming companies are accelerating efforts to expand abroad to seek new growth opportunities overseas.

4. China’s trade in services moves onto the fast lane of development

China’s services trade has maintained fast growth. Data from the country’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) showed that China’s imports and exports of services totaled over 1.45 trillion yuan ($214.6 billion) in the first quarter of 2022, rising 25.8 percent year on year.

Its exports of services grew 30.8 percent to 713.98 billion yuan and imports of services reached 743.01 billion yuan with a year-on-year increase of 21.3 percent. The growth of services exports outpaced import growth by 9.5 percentage points, resulting in a 56.4-percent drop in the country’s services trade deficit to 29.03 billion yuan from the same period last year.

5. Chinese embrace digital yuan as China further promotes a pilot program

China's digital yuan transactions hit nearly 87.57 billion yuan at the end of 2021, as the country ramped up research and pilot use of the central bank's digital currency.

A total of 261 million personal wallets for the digital yuan had been opened, and the number of pilot scenarios had exceeded 8.08 million, said Zou Lan, an official with the PBOC.

The People's Bank of China (PBOC) announced in early April that the pilot program would be expanded to more domestic cities, including Tianjin, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, and six cities in east China's Zhejiang Province hosting the 19th Asian Games, following its successful operation over the past years.

Editor: Fan Wenwu