Why Are Make-up Working Days a Thing in China?

With the Chinese New holiday over, most of us have to deal with tomorrow (Saturday) occupied by what's perhaps the most dreaded of work-related days in all of China – a make-up working day.

We've all come to accept this as part of working life here, but ever wonder how make-up working days came into being? Thanks to an article from The Beijing News (新京报), here is a little history behind make-up holidays.

1949: The Beginning 

The roots can be traced back to the middle of the last century.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the State Council stipulated that there should be a total of seven days reserved for four holidays in each year: New Year's Day (a one-day holiday), Spring Festival (a three-day holiday), Labor Day (a one-day holiday), and National Day (a two-day holiday).

1999: Golden Weeks & Make-up Days

This remained essentially the same for 50 years until 1997, when China's economy was hit hard by the Southeast Asian financial crisis. One of the strategies developed to revive the economy was to boost domestic spending on travel and leisure. By 1999, a revised holiday plan was introduced, which retained the three-day Spring Festival holiday but extended Labor Day and National Day to three days each.

The powers-that-be, looking to increase leisure time, were trying to dream up how they could allow people to travel for seven days yet continue to only give people the statutory three days off for the holiday.

Bingo! Some genius made a simple decision: Let’s give people two extra weekdays off, allowing for people to have the weekend plus five weekday work days off, for an uninterrupted string of seven days away from work. BUT, we’ll ask people to make up for those two extra days by working on weekend days right before or after the break. 

Take this Chinese New Year as an example. On the calendar, there are eight consecutive days off (Jan 28-Feb 4). Included in that is a weekend (Feb 1-2), which most people get off anyway, but the Sunday (Jan 26) before the holiday was a workday, and this coming Saturday (Feb 8) is also a workday. So, essentially, what seems like an eight-day long holiday is actually the equivalent of four work days off when you factor in the make up days.

This indeed boosted economic growth by driving up consumption, but consideration had to be given to employers, who still had to pay wages for these days off. 

To give you a better idea of the cost, 2019 data from the Ministry of Human Resources shows that employers paid more than RMB 40 billion in wages for each holiday day.

This year has seen a new change, though, with two extra public holidays added, now Chinese New Year's Eve is a public holiday and the day after Labor Day (May 2) is also a public holiday. Luckily, no extra make-up days have been added to account for the extra holidays. Yay!

2007: Back to Tradition

In 2007, further revision was made to holidays to re-introduce traditional Chinese holidays, but authorities once again worried about too much leisure time. Thus, there had to be a trade-off: The Qing Ming Festival, the Dragon Boat Festival, and the Mid-Autumn Festival were added to the list of public holidays, each with one day off, and the Labor Day holiday was changed back from three days to one day. (However, as we mentioned this year, it has now been changed to a two day holiday.)

Adding a wrinkle to planning is that each of these traditional holidays is marked on the lunar calendar, thus their date and day of the week on the Gregorian calendar changes every year. 

This is where things get weird:

– If these holidays fall on a Monday or a Friday, that means a three-day weekend is formed naturally and nothing else changes.

– If they fall on a Tuesday, then Monday is given as a day off and a weekend make-up work day is added (thus creating three consecutive days off).

– If they fall on a Thursday, the Friday is given as a day off and a weekend make-up work day is added (again, creating three consecutive non-work days).

– If they fall on a Saturday or Sunday, an extra day is tossed our way to make them three-day weekends.

– Finally, if the holiday falls on a Wednesday, we're out of luck: We just get hump day off and nothing extra is added on. 

The changes to China's yearly holiday schedule have indeed had a positive economic impact. Take the Labor Day holiday back when it was a full Golden Week (from 1999 to 2007): National tourism income for that week increased from RMB 14.1 billion to RMB 73.6 billion, with an average annual growth rate of more than 20 percent. Even in 2020, against the backdrop of a pandemic and with the holiday shortened, the Labor Day holiday still generated RMB 47.5 billion in tourism revenue.

Nevertheless, for the time being, there are no plans to further adjust this system, and make-up work days appear to be here to stay. Many scholars believe that because China is still a country whose economy relies heavily on labor-intensive industries, any additional non-productive days would be too much of a burden for businesses to bear.

Be that as it may, the idea of having to work weekend make-up days is not well received by most employees. In 2013, an online survey revealed that more than 70 percent of respondents were not satisfied with these holiday arrangements.

Another survey, conducted in 2021 (this time of people in Beijing only) shows that acceptance of the holiday adjustment system has increased, but 46 percent remain dissatisfied with weekend make up work days (one can only imagine the remaining 54 percent are employers who hate paying holiday wages). 

Despite the discontent, the policy remains. 

What do you think of these make-up working days? Let us know in the comments!

READ: China’s Remaining Holiday Calendar for 2025

Images: the Beijingers Unsplash