The public holiday is about a week. The production gap is six to eight. Importers who plan against the official dates rather than the actual shutdown pattern discover the difference in February, when nothing they ordered in January exists yet.
What actually closes, and for how long
The holiday date moves with the lunar calendar, falling somewhere between late January and mid-February. Around that date, three separate effects overlap.
Workers leave early. Migrant staff travel long distances home and many depart a week or more before the official start. Production capacity does not stop abruptly — it declines through the preceding fortnight as lines lose people.
The supply chain closes in sequence. Your factory's raw material suppliers, component makers, printers and carton suppliers all shut down too, and not necessarily on the same schedule. A factory technically open may be unable to produce because its material supplier closed a week earlier.
Return is gradual. Not everyone comes back on the stated reopening date, and not everyone comes back at all. Full production capacity typically returns two to four weeks after the official end. Factories generally will not admit this in advance, because they do not know their own return rate until it happens.
Plan on a realistic gap of six weeks around the holiday during which output is unreliable, and eight weeks before capacity is genuinely normal.
The quality risk before the holiday
This is the part that costs money quietly.
In the final two weeks, factories are trying to close every order before shutdown. Lines run long hours, QC staff are under pressure, and the incentive is to ship rather than to rework. Defect rates rise measurably in this window, and this is well known to anyone who has inspected goods in late January.
Two consequences follow. If your goods are produced in that window, inspect them — this is not the order to skip inspection on. And if the inspection fails, understand that rework may be impossible until after the holiday, because the workers who would do it have left. A pre-holiday failure can mean a six-week delay, not a three-day one.
Where you can, avoid having production land in the last two weeks at all. Either finish earlier or accept a post-holiday slot.
Staff turnover, and why the same factory is not the same factory
A meaningful proportion of workers do not return to the same employer after the holiday. Turnover rates vary widely by region and industry but are high enough that a factory can restart with a substantially different production team.
The practical effect on your order: the operators who ran your product last year may not be the ones running it this year. Skill-dependent processes suffer most — welding, finishing, assembly with any craft element, and any process controlled by operator judgement rather than by machine setting.
This is the argument for a golden sample and a written specification that does not rely on institutional memory. "Same as last time" means nothing to someone who was not there last time. Your first post-holiday production run of any complex product deserves inspection even if the supplier has been reliable for years.
Freight, before and after
The weeks before the holiday see a shipping rush as everyone tries to move goods before the shutdown. Container space tightens, rates rise, and bookings get rolled. Book earlier than you think you need to, and expect that a booking is not a guarantee.
After the holiday there is usually a lull as the pipeline empties, followed by a second surge when post-holiday production starts shipping. Ports also work through backlog, which can add days.
A month-by-month plan
Working back from a holiday falling in early February:
October. Confirm specifications and place orders for anything needed in Q1. Ask each supplier directly for their planned shutdown and reopening dates, in writing. Ask when their key material suppliers close — that date is often the binding one.
November. Production for pre-holiday delivery should be underway. Sample approvals should be complete. This is the last comfortable window for a specification change.
Early December. Production should be finishing. Schedule inspections now — inspection capacity is also constrained in January and slots fill.
Late December to early January. Inspect, resolve any rework while workers are still present, and book freight. Treat this as the real deadline.
Mid to late January. Ship. Anything not shipped by the last working week will sit until after the holiday, in a warehouse, at your risk.
February. Assume nothing progresses. Do not schedule commitments that depend on Chinese production in this month.
March. Production restarts but at reduced and variable capacity. Inspect first runs. Expect lead times quoted in March to be optimistic.
If you are already late
Three options, in order of preference.
Split the order: produce and ship what can be finished before shutdown, take the remainder after. Partial delivery beats no delivery, and it keeps some stock moving.
Move the deadline to post-holiday and accept it. A March delivery planned in December is manageable; a February delivery promised and missed is not.
Air freight the critical portion. Expensive, and cheaper than an empty shelf through the whole first quarter.
What does not work is pressing a factory to compress production into the final week. That is precisely the window where defect rates are highest and rework is impossible.
Send us your Q1 requirements and target dates and we will work back from your suppliers' actual shutdown dates rather than the published holiday calendar.