China experienced a moderate surge on the ninth day of the Spring Festival travel rush, with the number of cross-regional passenger trips estimated to surpass 230 million, data from transportation departments showed.
On Wednesday, railway passenger trips are estimated to reach 13.4 million, highway trips to surpass 210 million, waterway trips to reach 700,000, and civil aviation trips to hit 2.29 million, according to the data.
By 14:00 on Wednesday, 263 million train tickets for the Spring Festival travel rush had been sold, according to the train ticket booking platform 12306. To accommodate the surge in passengers ahead of the holiday, a total of 1,346 passenger trains have been added to run on Wednesday.
The roads are experiencing heavy passenger traffic, with an estimated 7.2 billion cross-regional driving trips to be made during the entire travel rush.
"We have made targeted plans to alleviate traffic congestion on different road sections. We have also strengthened safety checks on road sections that are vulnerable to low temperatures, rain, snow, and icy conditions. The priority is to ensure smooth traffic flow across the highway network, especially on key arterial roads," said Hua Lei, director of the road network management department of the Ministry of Transport.
In civil aviation, passenger traffic remains high on Wednesday, with airlines boosting capacity on key routes and during peak times.
As the travel rush starts, more vehicles are crossing the Qiongzhou Strait, which separates Guangdong Province in southern China from Hainan Island. Additional service points have been set up in the port waiting areas and along cross-strait roads to help passengers and drivers with inquiries and guidance.
The Spring Festival travel rush, known as Chunyun in Chinese, is the largest annual human migration in the world as tens of millions of Chinese people return to their hometowns to celebrate the Lunar New Year with their families. This year's Spring Festival travel rush runs from Jan 14 to Feb 22.
China sees moderate surge during Spring Festival travel rush
China's development has never been a "threat" to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries, Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said at a regular press conference in Beijing on Friday.
Some Western media and think tanks are peddling so-called "China Shock 2.0," saying that "China is achieving fast development in high-tech sectors such as renewable energy and AI and relies on foreign markets to absorb its overcapacity, thus reducing the market share of developed countries and sending more serious shock waves to the global economy compared with the era of traditional manufacture industry," while there are foreign commentators saying that the "China Shock 2.0" argument ignores the genuine innovation occurring within the Chinese industrial ecosystem and that Chinese export is the exact booster of the global economy that is needed in the turbulent period and more indispensable than ever.
Commenting on that, Lin said: "From the world's factory to the world's market and innovation powerhouse, China's development is achieved through strong performance driven by innovation and brings tangible cooperation opportunities and space to the world. High-quality Chinese products represented by the 'old three' of textiles, furniture and home appliances have stabilized the global industrial and supply chain, lowered the living cost of global consumers and eased the inflationary pressure worldwide. China's green production capacity represented by the 'new three' of electric vehicles, batteries and solar panels has bridged the gap between supply and demand in global green development and bolstered the global energy transition and low-carbon development. Moreover, China's high-tech products represented by the 'new new three' of robots, AI and innovative drugs have broken high-tech barriers and monopoly and enabled people in more countries to access affordable new technologies," said the spokesman.
"Openness and cooperation bring about progress and win-win result. China's development has never been a 'threat' to anyone but the source of growth advancing common development of all countries. What really creates 'shocks' to the world has never been the innovation of Chinese companies and efficiency of Chinese industrial capacity, but protectionist moves of setting up barriers, decoupling and severing industrial and supply chains. China will stay committed to high-standard opening up, defend the multilateral trading system and provide more certainty and new impetus to the world economy with its own steady development," said Lin.
China's development never a threat: FM spokesman
