BEIJING, Jan. 25 -- A recently released survey gives insight into the average day of a Chinese citizen, giving a blow-by-blow account of how they live, work and play in 2018.
The survey says that they spent 9 hours and 19 minutes sleeping and 1 hour and 44 minutes dining in 2018, 17 minutes and four minutes more than in 2008 respectively, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Friday.
Paid work took them 4 hours and 24 minutes, four minutes less than in 2008.
Senior statistician Jin Hong with the NBS said that the longer sleeping and dining time indicated a more healthy lifestyle, while the shorter time spent in paid work reflected higher productivity as the per capita GDP of the Chinese had doubled in 10 years.
The NBS survey interviewed a total of 48,580 urban and rural residents aged 15 years and over in 11 provincial-level regions in 2018. Respondents recorded the amount of time spent on biological needs, paid and unpaid work, leisure, education and travel, on a typical workday and non-workday.
Men spent about 100 minutes more on paid work than women on average, and men aged 25 to 29 worked the longest hours, 8 hours and 6 minutes per day.
Meanwhile, women typically spent 3 hours and 48 minutes on unpaid work including housework and caring for children, which occupies about 90 minutes of a man's day.
Compared with 10 years ago, the average time a Chinese resident spent on housework in 2018 fell by 17 minutes to 1 hour and 26 minutes. But time spent with family members more than doubled to 53 minutes, 85 percent of which is for attending children and helping them study.
Jin Hong said that surging socialized services including meal delivery and hourly-accounted household services had allowed Chinese residents to spend less time on housework and more time with family.
As for leisure time, respondents reported watching television as their most time-consuming entertainment, at 100 minutes daily, a decrease of 26 minutes from 10 years ago. Recreation and entertainment took 1 hour and 5 minutes, about 25 minutes more, while time for keep-fit exercises rose by 8 minutes.
The statistician said Chinese residents had more free time in 2018 than in 2008. A general trend is that the more one earns, the less free time they have.
The survey shows that residents with lower incomes spent more time watching TV, while higher-income earners used more time reading.
Chinese residents used 38 minutes a day on transport in 2018, nearly half as much as that in 2008. Office workers spent 16 minutes less time commuting while student commuting time shortened by 27 minutes.
Jin said this reflected improvements in China's transport system.
When the survey was first conducted by the NBS in 2008, Chinese people mainly used desktops to log onto the Internet and stayed online for only 14 minutes. In 2018, they could quickly access the Internet through mobile phones, PAD and laptops, spending 2 hours and 42 minutes online a day.
About 85 countries and regions including the United States, Germany and France have conducted such surveys, which are believed to have important policy uses, particularly in the areas of health, employment, social protection and childcare.