CBN丨2025 Spring Festival travel rush kicks off

2025年01月14日 19:55 21世纪经济报道 21财经APP 李莹亮

Hi everyone. I’m Stephanie LI.

Coming up on today’s program

Spring Festival travel rush begins with record 9 billion trips expected;
China's NEV production and sales surpass 12 million each, leading globally in 2024 for the 10th year.

Here’s what you need to know about China in the past 24 hours

As the Spring Festival draws near, Chinese travelers packed into cars, trains and planes on Tuesday, kicking off the landmark chunyun, the world's largest annual human migration.

Chinese authorities expect an unprecedented 9 billion inter-regional trips during this year's chunyun, or Spring Festival travel rush. The 40-day travel period began on Tuesday and will continue through Feb. 22.

Over 510 million passenger trips will be handled by the country's railways during the period, with an average of 12.75 million trips daily, an increase of 5.5 percent compared with the previous year. About 10.3 million train trips are expected to be made on Tuesday.

A total of 75.74 million railway tickets had been sold as of 4pm on Sunday since the start of Spring Festival travel ticket sales on December 31, 2024, media reported.

China State Railway Group plans to operate more than 14,000 passenger trains daily, providing an additional 500,000 seats per day. Ahead of the Spring Festival travel rush, a total of 185 new Fuxing bullet trains had been put into service nationwide, capable of reaching speeds of up to 350 kilometers per hour.

Meanwhile, China's civil aviation sector is set to handle a record of 90 million passenger trips during the holiday travel season. The sector will operate an average of 18,500 flights per day, an 8.4 percent increase from 2024.

This year, road trips are also expected to dominate the annual travel rush, accounting for about 80 percent of all inter-regional journeys. An estimated 7.2 billion road trips are projected, with highways likely to experience record-breaking single-day traffic peaks.

As passengers have been packing their bags to embark on reunion trips filled with joy, observers predict that the upcoming holidays will see a consumption spree, which is set to provide a vivid display of the vitality and dynamism of "an economy on the move."

Bookings for domestic and overseas tours have also doubled year-on-year during the Spring Festival holidays, data from trip.com showed. In particular, bookings for trips to Hong Kong soared 73 percent year-on-year, while those to the UK, Spain, Italy, France and Iceland jumped 56 percent, 74 percent, 50 percent, 49 percent and 108 percent, respectively.

China recorded a total of 610 million entries and exits in 2024, marking a 43.9 percent year-on-year increase, according to the National Immigration Administration on Tuesday. The number of foreign nationals entering the country without a visa reached 20.115 million, presenting a year-on-year increase of 112.3 percent.

Greater Bay Area, Greater future

Hong Kong passport-holders visiting Saudi Arabia will be eligible for visa-on-arrival at designated ports, starting this Wednesday, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu has announced. The new arrangement includes multiple entry visas with a maximum stay of 90 days. Meanwhile, visa-free stays for Saudi passport holders in Hong Kong will be extended from 30 to 90 days.

Next on industry and company news

China's new-energy vehicle (NEV) output and sales in 2024 each exceeded 12 million, topping global rankings for the 10th consecutive year, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM) on Monday. In 2024, NEV production and sales reached 12.89 million and 12.87 million units, up 34.4 percent and 35.5 percent year-on-year, with sales accounting for 40.9 percent of total new car sales, up 9.3 percentage points from the previous year. NEV exports rose 6.7 percent to 1.28 million, maintaining global leadership.
China’s instagram-like app Xiaohongshu topped the most downloaded apps in the US as the TikTok ban closes. The social media platform, also called Red Note by US users, becomes the most downloaded free mobile applications in the United States in Apple’s App Store, according to the latest ranking. Shares in several marketing agencies related to Xiaohongshu, including BlueFocus, KAISA Jiayun Technology, Shunya International, and Insight Brand Marketing Group, surged over 10 percent today.
Leapmotor expects to have turned a profit in Q4 last year, achieving its single-quarter profit goal a year ahead of schedule, it said in an earnings forecast yesterday. If it hits the milestone, Leapmotor will be only the second Chinese NEV startup in the black after Li Auto.

Switching gears to financial news

China’s financial institutions offered 18.09 trillion yuan of new loans in 2024, according to data released by the People’s Bank of China on Tuesday. It was lower than the previous year’s volume of 22.75 trillion yuan, representing the first annual drop in 13 years.

Wrapping up with a quick look at the stock market

Chinese stocks surged on Tuesday, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite jumping 2.5 percent and the Shenzhen Component rising 3.8 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index also closed 1.8 percent higher, and the TECH index rallied 3.1 percent.