What is ‘chunyun’ and how important is it to the Chinese economy?

Also referred to as the Spring Festival travel rush, chunyun is the world’s largest annual human migration

Chunyun (literally “Spring transport”) refers to the 40-day peak travel period around Spring Festival (aka Lunar New Year), which this year falls on 10 February. Millions of people take advantage of the extended time off from work and study to travel back to their home regions and spend the important festival with family. As a result, train stations and airports are packed, and tickets are expensive and hard to come by.

How big will chunyun 2024 be?

One year on from the lifting of China’s Covid restrictions, this year’s chunyun is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels, with Ministry of Transport officials predicting more than 9 billion passenger trips. Between 26 January and 1 February alone – the first week of the peak travel period – the country’s railway network handled 81.55 million journeys, or over 11 million a day.

Many hope that the Spring Festival period will inject some much-needed vitality into the economy after the catering and travel industries contributed significantly to China’s GDP in 2023. Nevertheless, pent-up demand is waning, and some consumers will be spooked by risks such as the continued troubles in the property sector.

New Spring Festival travel trends

As China Briefing notes, in recent years, there has been a growing trend of people combining their Spring Festival celebrations with tourism and celebrating with their family in a new destination. This is especially true among urban Millennials and Gen Z, many of whom find the pressure of returning home and spending time with more traditionally-minded relatives overwhelming.

Within China, the most popular destinations for Spring Festival travel are either warmer locations such as Yunnan and Guangdong, or winter destinations like Harbin and Beijing.

International travel is also popular with people from first and second-tier cities. Now that China’s Covid restrictions are practically a distant memory, and with several new mutual visa exemptions (including Thailand and Singapore) in place, international journeys are set to boom. The National Immigration Administration has predicted that the daily average number of international border clearances will reach 1.8 million people – more than three times higher than 2023 and almost equalling 2019’s figures.