A consumption campaign initiated by the Xiamen municipal bureau of commerce generated a robust growth in consumption between January and May this year in Xiamen, East China's Fujian province. 

Statistics show that during the past five months, Xiamen reported total retail sales of consumer goods of 118.41 billion yuan ($17.76 billion), a year-on-year increase of 32 percent, and higher than the provincial level by 11.9 percentage points. 

The consumption campaign was initiated during the May Day holiday, in which the bureau encouraged sellers to issue coupons worth more than 80 million yuan to consumers, while subsidizing their profit losses. The electronic coupons symbolize how digitalization has stimulated sales and has injected new momentum into the city's growth in consumption. 

Data indicate that from January to May, the city's enterprises above a designated size reaped total online sales of 22.07 billion yuan, up by 42.7 percent year-on-year, and surpassing the provincial sales total by 5.3 percentage points. 

The consumption campaign is centered on festival consumption, quality consumption, night consumption and automobile consumption. It focuses on several key areas such as dining, entertainment, culture, travel, shopping and exercise. 

Retail sales of vehicle-related products in this period reached 16.23 billion yuan, rising by 48.4 percent from the same period last year. 

After being severely influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, Xiamen's catering industry also recovered to its previous level, with 237 of the city's catering enterprises above designated size registering positive sales growth during the last five months.