Many more Chinese people are traveling back to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year festival this year, with the end of Covid Zero and pandemic controls meaning people could once again move around freely inside China.
(Bloomberg) — Many more Chinese people are traveling back to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year festival this year, with the end of Covid Zero and pandemic controls meaning people could once again move around freely inside China.
People have made more than 520 million trips within the country by road, rail, water or air in the first 13 days of the Lunar New Year travel period, well above the 351 million trips made at the same point in 2022 and more than double the number in 2021. However that’s still down 47% from the pre-pandemic level in 2019, according to official data from the Ministry of Transport.
A breakdown of the figures shows that more people have chosen to drive home instead of using public transportation such as trains. There were a total of 320 million passenger cars on the nation’s highways between Jan. 7 and Jan. 18, Ministry of Transport officials said at a press conference on Thursday, up 13% over the same period in 2022 and 12% higher than in 2019.
The slower recovery in public transportation “shows that people are a bit cautious about public transport with concerns about reinfection,” Ernan Cui, China consumer analyst at Gavekal Dragonomics, said during an online seminar on Thursday. “Full normalization will take a few more months.”
Many people are traveling home over the holiday for the first time in three years after the government abruptly scrapped Covid restrictions in early December. Although the official holiday is between Jan. 21 and Jan. 27, many workers are having a longer-than-usual holiday, disrupting factory production this month and likely the early part of next month too.
Increased travel from the cities back to people’s home towns meant that movement within major cities declined. In cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the number of subway passengers dropped between 10% and 25% by Thursday from a week earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Traffic congestion levels across 15 major cities in China fell 16% by Thursday from the previous week, according to an index compiled by BloombergNEF based on Baidu Inc. traffic data.
More Confident
Consumer confidence has generally rebounded since a trough reached in early December, even though it has fluctuated and fell slightly over the past week, according to a daily poll by US firm Morning Consult.
However, an initial surge in people going to the movies following the reopening is losing steam, with nationwide daily average movie revenue falling to 43 million yuan ($6.3 million) by Thursday from 80 million yuan two weeks ago, according to data from online ticketing platform Maoyan Entertainment. That may pick up next week, with the holiday period traditionally a popular time to go to the movies.
–With assistance from Tom Hancock, Jinshan Hong and Lin Zhu.
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