Over 220 mln passenger trips expected on 24th day of Spring Festival travel season

China's national transportation systems handled an estimated 220.38 million cross-regional passenger trips on Thursday, the 24th day of the Spring Festival travel rush, less than on previous days following the end of the Spring Festival holiday.

Among these, 15 million trips were by rail, 202.13 million by road, 850,000 by water, and 2.4 million by air, statistics showed.

On Wednesday, there were around 231.5 million cross-regional passenger trips, a decrease of 28.5 percent from the previous day, which was the seventh day of the Chinese New Year or the last day of Spring Festival holiday this year. This figure is also 24.9 percent lower than the same period in 2024, when the Spring Festival holiday ended on the eighth day of the Chinese New Year.

China's railway network handled 16.633 million passenger trips, down 2.4 percent from the previous day but up 3.5 percent from the same day in last year's travel rush.

Road trips totaled 211.43 million, decreasing 30.3 percent from the previous day and 26.8 percent from the previous year.

Waterway passenger trips amounted to 1.023 million, falling 16.2 percent from the previous day and 14.1 percent from the previous year.

Meanwhile, 2.45 million passengers took to the skies, up 0.26 percent from the previous day and 2.27 percent from the previous year.

Pre-holiday and post-holiday travel were especially concentrated in key urban clusters like the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei cluster, the Yangtze River Delta, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, and the Chengdu-Chongqing region.

The 40-day travel rush, known as "chunyun" in Chinese, runs from Jan 14 to Feb 22. It is considered the world's largest annual human migration and coincides with China's biggest traditional festival celebrations, a time when Chinese people return home for family reunions to celebrate the Chinese New Year, which fell on Jan 29 this year.

Over 220 mln passenger trips expected on 24th day of Spring Festival travel season

The U.S. State Department announced Wednesday that it is pausing immigrant visa processing from 75 countries.

The measure will apply to "countries whose migrants take welfare from the American people at unacceptable rates. The freeze will remain active until the U.S. can ensure that new immigrants will not extract wealth from the American people," the department said on X.

The pause impacts countries including Somalia, Haiti, Iran and Eritrea, "whose immigrants often become public charges on the United States upon arrival," said the State Department.

Earlier on Wednesday, the department announced in a memo that it would suspend visa processing for 75 countries, including Somalia, Russia, Afghanistan, Brazil, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Nigeria, Thailand and Yemen, according to a Fox News report.

The pause will begin Jan. 21 and will continue indefinitely until the department conducts a reassessment of visa processing, the report said. The move came after the White House announced on Tuesday that it is ending temporary protected status for Somali immigrants amid fraud allegations in Minnesota.

On Monday, the State Department announced on social media that it had revoked over 100,000 visas since U.S. President Donald Trump took office nearly a year ago.

In November 2025, Trump announced his intention to permanently suspend immigration from what he described as "Third World countries", following the death of a National Guard member after being shot near the White House by an Afghan national.

U.S. freezes immigrant visa processing from 75 countries