Beijing Kempinski Hotel held a Christmas buffet for 558 yuan per head, which staff said was very successful. The buffet served dozens of Chinese and Western meals, including lobster salad, steak, raw salmon and roast turkey. The five-star hotel also introduced a dinner buffet on New Year's Eve at 688 yuan. Reservations were said to have been "vigorous".

"The holiday is very, very big for us because most of our sales come from holiday promotions," said Wang Yan, manager of a Laox store in Beijing.

Located off the South Third Ring Road, the Laox store has four floors and an area of more than 12,000 square meters. The store not only provides home appliances and electronics but also offers goods such as musical instruments, clocks, watches, daily commodities, jewelry and household supplies.

Laox is a Japanese home electronics chain that sells popular items including digital cameras and iPads. Suning Appliance Co, China's largest home appliance retailer by sales revenue, is its biggest shareholder. The first Laox store entered the Chinese mainland in Nanjing in 2011. Currently it has eight shops in the country.

Wang said sales by the store reached 5 million yuan in just one day during the National Day holiday, when sales accounted for around 50 to 60 percent of the entire monthly target.

According to the Ministry of Commerce, consumer spending over last year's seven-day Lunar New Year holiday, which was the biggest spending season of the year, surged year-on-year by 19 percent to 404.5 billion yuan, or roughly $61.3 billion, last year.

In addition, during the National Day holiday, from Sept 30 to Oct 7, the combined sales of major retail and catering enterprises in the country rose year-on-year by 15 percent to 801 billion yuan, said the Commerce Ministry.

"For the new year holiday, we put a huge Christmas tree outside the store, had our sales people dress up as Santas and introduced big sales promotions," said Wang from Laox. She believed sales would not be disappointing.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, retail sales in China grew 14.2 percent year-on-year to 18.68 trillion yuan in the first 11 months of last year.

Urban consumption expanded 15 percent from a year earlier to 1.6 trillion yuan in November, while the catering sector reported 211.5 billion yuan in revenue in November, up 14.2 percent year-on-year, said the statistics bureau.

China has already overtaken Italy, Japan, France and the United Kingdom in terms of international tourist spending. In 2010, the average travel spending per capita by Chinese visitors to the United States was $6,243, followed by India at $6,131 and Brazil at $4,940, while European countries peaked at $3,132 on average.

The World Luxury Association says China's appetite for luxuries is growing faster than that of any other country. China will become the largest luxury goods market and its sales volume will reach $14.6 billion in the next few years.

"When did Chinese people end their 'saving for a rainy day' reputation and lose the virtue of thriftiness? And when did consumption and luxury spending become terms of recommendation?" asked TV anchor Liang Dong.

Sun Shijin, director of the Psychology Research Center at Fudan University in Shanghai, said: "As China has achieved new heights in its economy and its society recently entered an era of mass consumption, the purchasing power of Chinese citizens has begun to rise along with the development of the commodity economy. People sometimes lose their sense of reason when they pursue a material life. Conspicuous consumption during a period of social transition is an inevitable process of social development."

As investment and exports cooled down in recent years, the Chinese government called for an increase in domestic consumption to maintain economic growth. Beijing plans to hit 30 billion yuan from customer spending by the end of 2015 with a year-on-year increase of 15 percent.

Perhaps the answer to Liang's question partly lies in the book The Wealth of Nations by the Scotish economist Adam Smith. In it, he states: "Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer."

liwoke@chinadaily.com.cn