Nation worked up over days off

Debate over the form and extent of public holidays belies the deeper causes of a weak private sector

Calibrating the holiday schedule has been a discreet exercise in democracy, and people are realizing that there is no perfect choice, only an optimal one determined by a majority.

The recent online vote on the 2014 schedule of China's public holidays was enlightening in many ways. Most of all, it shows there is give and take in every decision. Here are the three choices proposed by the National Holiday Office on Nov 27:

Plan A: Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) will be seven days off, including four days from adjoining weekends. National Day (Oct 1) will have three days off, with no shuffling of weekends. New Year's Day, Qingming, Labor Day, Duanwu and Mid-Autumn Festival will each be one day off.

Plan B: National Day will have five consecutive days off, including a weekend. The rest as for Plan A.

Plan C: Same as plan A, except National Day, like the Spring Festival, will have seven days off, including four weekend days.

Plan C got the majority of votes, varying from 50 percent to 60 percent on different websites, which, if adopted, means 2014 will be pretty much the same as 2013 in the arrangement of civic holidays.

Some cried foul at the exclusion of a seven-day Labor Day (May 1) holiday, as it would have been the most popular had it been included. Others argued that a longer Spring Festival is needed as it is the time traditionally stipulated for family gatherings, and those living far apart have to spend time traveling home to be with their parents.

Having a long nationwide holiday sounds like a lot of fun, but it is often a logistical nightmare. It strains resources to breaking point when hundreds of millions of people travel at the same time. Even for businesses that can hike prices, it means long idle periods and wasted resources during the slow season.

The rousing call for longer and more holidays is a sign of the middle class flexing its muscles. In the agrarian era, farmers could have up to half a year off over a long winter, giving rise to such folk art as the two-person banter of Northeast China. The notion of legal holidays did not creep into Chinese consciousness until the 1990s when large segments of the society started moving to urban areas.

I remember when I was a kid even the weekend meant only one day off, or one and half days at most. Yet productivity was so low that many treated their working hours as a time of relaxation and reserved the holiday for heavy-lifting household chores.

The three options listed above have a fixed number of holidays - 11 days excluding "borrowed" weekends. It was obvious some people were hoping for more holidays in aggregate, not just moving days around to form longer holiday periods.

It is reasonable that people want long holidays - to spend time with loved ones, to visit faraway places or simply to take a rest from work. It's just not the wisest thing to have long holidays with a billion-plus others. The way I see it, it is the scheduling of holidays, more than the number of holidays, that is at the root of the problem.

Now, you can do nothing about the Spring Festival. Essentially Thanksgiving and Christmas rolled into one, it is determined by the lunar calendar and can be much longer than seven days depending on the kind of work you do and the policy of your employer. In most workplaces that I know, you can extend the week by several days by either finishing up your work ahead of time or asking for leave outright.

If your parents live far away and your work is more output-oriented, this can be easily arranged. Generally speaking, the festive mood lasts two weeks, meaning productivity for a week beyond the legal portion of the holidays would not be very high.

Overall, things are getting better now, what with the availability of high-speed trains and the affordability of flights. Colleges tend to stagger the departure and arrival dates for their students, and the army of migrant workers is thinning.

What the survey failed to take into account, however, was that most of its respondents were white-collar workers. Those with more flexible schedules did not figure properly in the results.

The Labor Day and National Day "golden weeks", which were implemented for several years before the former was discontinued, have already displayed to the fullest both the pros and cons of a week-long holiday. Retaining one of the weeks seems good for experimentation partly because either falls at the beginning or end of a tourist season. Other than that, there are workers whose jobs leave absolutely no room for flexibility in the shuffling of workdays, and therefore depend on such weeks for serious sightseeing.

The real solution lies in paid vacations that are granted by the employer. This system is at its early stage in China and is embraced only by employers with strong financial backup, such as government organizations and state-owned companies. It is difficult to enforce among the millions of private businesses, especially those with limited size and wherewithal.

Think of it this way: If you are self-employed, you don't really need a government edict to tell you when to take time off and for how long. If a legal holiday falls at a busy time in your business, you'll probably keep working and take it when everyone else is back at work.

It may sound farfetched, but a fundamental improvement in the nation's holiday scheme hinges on respect for private businesses, the protection of their rights and interests, and the lowering of their tax burden.

Yes, some of the high-tech companies have enormous clout, and entrepreneurship is always encouraged, but it is the millions of small and medium-sized companies that can put a dent into the unemployment rate and lift the biggest chunk of the lower and lower-middle class to a lifestyle with benefits such as health insurance and paid vacations.

In that sense, there is not much the government can do. If it forces every employer to give every employee a certain number of days as paid vacation, it will simply push a large number of them over the cliff into bankruptcy and closure. Only when most are thriving will they willingly give such benefits to those who helped them succeed.

While it is honorable to fight for one's rights or perks, there is an undeniable whiff of a getting-more-for-less mentality. If someone offers 22 days of civic holiday, he or she will become a national hero. But would that be feasible? Should China march in the welfare-state direction of some European nations?

Before we imitate the enviable benefits enjoyed in those countries, we should study their success and make entrepreneurship, not paper-shuffling civil service, the envy of the nation's young. Beyond a certain measure, things have to be earned one way or another.

Contact the writer at raymondzhou@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 12/06/2013 page30)