China was estimated to have handled more than 1.3 billion trips in the first week of its 40-day-long Spring Festival travel rush, with over 210 million trips made on Monday, the seventh day of the travel rush period.
The travel rush, also known as "Chunyun", is a period of high transportation demand coinciding with China's largest annual holiday, the Spring Festival, which is a time when hundreds of millions of people head home for family reunions and to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls on Jan 29 this year.
This massive migration, which began on Jan 14 and continues until Feb 22, is expected to see a staggering 9 billion passenger trips this year, with both rail and air passenger numbers set to hit record highs.
In terms of rail transport, China's railways were estimated to handle 13.45 million passenger trips on Monday, with 862 extra trains scheduled to meet the rising demand.
As passenger numbers rise ahead of the Spring Festival, China's railway authorities have focused on boosting capacity in high-demand areas, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou in southern China, as well as Chengdu and Chongqing in southwestern China.
Starting Monday, high-speed rail routes, including the Nanning-Guangzhou high-speed railway and Guiyang-Guangzhou high-speed railway, added 128 night trains, setting a new record for nightly services.
Meanwhile, road transportation saw an estimated 197 million passenger trips, while waterways recorded 700,000 trips and air travel hit 2.22 million, with 19,057 flights scheduled.
China estimated to handle over 1.3 bln trips in first week of Spring Festival travel rush
China estimated to handle over 1.3 bln trips in first week of Spring Festival travel rush
China estimated to handle over 1.3 bln trips in first week of Spring Festival travel rush
China's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) on Monday announced significant progress in its "AI+" initiative for centrally-administered state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in the pursuit of higher growth and efficiency, with over 500 application scenarios already deployed across key industries.
At a briefing, SASAC revealed that its "AI+" initiative is yielding positive results in crucial areas of the AI industry, including applications, computing power, data, and models. The initiative has involved the rollout of specific support policies and specialized AI training programs for SOEs.
"We currently have applications deployed in an layout of over 500 scenarios in key industries such as industrial manufacturing, energy, power grids, and intelligent connected vehicles. AI is significantly improving efficiency and reducing costs in areas like scientific-technological research, production and customer service. We have also actively guided two batches of centrally-administered SOEs to open application scenarios to society to build cooperation platforms," said Dai Xi, director of SASAC's Planning and Development Bureau.
The briefing highlighted that centrally-administered SOEs have amassed high-quality datasets in key sectors like transportation and logistics, financial services, green and low-carbon initiatives, industrial manufacturing, and the petroleum and petrochemical industries. They have also participated in the construction of multiple data annotation bases and invested in data companies that use specialized and sophisticated technologies to produce novel and unique products. Furthermore, a new centrally-administered SOE, China Shulian Logistics Information Co., Ltd., has been established to explore innovative models for the development and utilization of public data.
At the briefing, SASAC officials indicated that the "AI+" initiative will continue to be deepened throughout the year.
"We will focus on high-value scenarios with strong strategic significance, high economic returns, and close ties to people's livelihoods, to strengthen industry collaboration, expand openness and cooperation, and strengthen the deployment of scenarios. Centrally-administered SOEs will definitely increase their financial investment, adhere to a combination of production and investment, and use investment to promote production, and continue to expand long-term, strategic and patient capital for greater development of AI," Dai said.
China's SOEs embrace 'AI+' for higher growth, efficiency: authorities
