Economic Watch: Feeling green pulse in China's urban park spending wave

BEIJING, May 21 (Xinhua) -- Fine spring sunshine, burgers sizzling on the grill, and the beat of a rock band pulsing across Beijing's Chaoyang Park set a festive mood as the Juicy Burger Festival was in full swing during the May Day holiday early this month.

After savoring the last bite of her beef burger, Zhou Ziyue, a university student in Beijing, headed into the nearby mall inside the park. Around her, people lined up for an e-sports competition, while a pop-up store for "Black Myth: Wukong," a hit Chinese video game, was met with long queues.

"The last time I came, the crowd wasn't even a third of what I'm seeing today," said Zhou, surprised.

In January, Beijing rolled out a set of measures that encourage urban parks to blend culture, tourism and commerce. Guided by these policies, the park, located in Chaoyang District in eastern Beijing, drew over 470,000 visitors during the five-day holiday, jumping 60.8 percent compared with the same period last year.

Through IP collaborations, e-sports games and festival markets, the park ranked third in Beijing in visitor numbers during the holiday, trailing only the Summer Palace and the Temple of Heaven, the top two parks that feature historical attractions.

Chaoyang Park is only one of many Chinese urban parks that are transforming green areas into lively venues for consumers by exploring exciting possibilities for leisure and enjoyment.

During the holiday, the country's urban parks received over 212 million visitors, and hosted nearly 10,000 commercial and cultural events that generated more than 6.8 billion yuan (about 995 million U.S. dollars) in spending, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development.

In Shanghai's Zhongshan Park, a temporary wooden coffee stall appeared on the prime lawn during the May Day holiday, where visitors learned latte art to live music. The stall occupied just five or six square meters -- a wooden hut, a few tents, and scattered seating -- leaving the rest of the 400-square-meter lawn open for grass, sky and room to breathe.

"Parks don't lack coffee shops," said Wang Jing, deputy general manager of a local landscaping company that operates Zhongshan Park. "What they lack are coffee shops that know how to play with ideas and assemble experiences."

Commercial activities in parks, she added, should "aim to be pleasing," using services and content to activate spaces and enhance the quality and dynamism of public areas.

The park hosted over a dozen such events in May: two live concerts, an intangible cultural heritage dough modeling workshop, and an international flower festival that helped generate about 2.6 million yuan in consumer spending inside the park. The park, previously regarded as "a landscape to be viewed," had transformed into "an immersive space to be experienced."

By the end of 2025, Shanghai had built 1,100 parks, while Beijing, home to 1,136 parks, plans to build 200 more in the next ten years. In 2025 alone, Beijing spent 4.2 billion yuan on park construction and maintenance in 2025 on ecological restoration, facility upgrades and heritage preservation. In January, enterprises were also allowed to operate parks under contract for up to five years, allowing more willing businesses to participate in the long-term operation of parks.

Behind the park boom across Chinese cities is a shift in thinking about urban construction: less about just building, more about making the most of what they already have -- through spatial design, living environments, and governance -- to upgrade residents' quality of life.

At the World Mayors Dialogue held from May 13 to 15 in Chengdu, a southwestern Chinese city, mayors from around the world praised the city's eco-friendly environment and its efforts to improve urban living.

Bart Nevens, Vice Governor of Flemish Brabant in Belgium, said Chengdu is a city of skyscrapers yet carpeted with trees and parks, with an excellent cycling system. He added that the city's park-centered urban development has not only greatly improved residents' quality of life but also offered a replicable model for global climate action.

By the end of 2025, Chengdu had built an impressive network of over 10,000 kilometers of greenways and created more than 1,500 multifunctional parks. On a typical weekend, cyclists dot the greenways, families picnic on the grass, and friends gather under the trees with tea and music.

Building on Chengdu's pilot experience, more than 70 cities across China are exploring their own approaches to park-city development, tailoring the concept to local conditions.

In Shenzhen, visitors sipped tea at waterside pavilions and watched drones deliver coffee to picnic blankets, amid a citywide surge that saw parks draw 6.05 million visitors and foot traffic rise 21 percent during the May Day break. In Guangzhou, 92 kilometers of "green belts" with bike paths and promenades have replaced old industrial waterfronts, turning derelict landscapes into places for residents to linger, jog and gather.

According to Wang Yefei, deputy director of the Greening and City Appearance Bureau of Shanghai's Changning District, urban parks in China are evolving from city "green lungs" into "emotional oases" amid busy urban life.

"What we are building in our parks goes beyond oxygen and natural beauty," she said. "It is also about coffee that brings people together, handicrafts that carry cultural memories, and music that soothes the soul."

These park scenes are, in essence, the construction of a city's "emotional infrastructure," which is vital for citizens' sense of happiness and belonging, she added.