Myanmar kicks off 2025 general election

Myanmar kicked off its 2025 multi-party democratic general election with the first phase held on Sunday.

Polling stations open from 06:00 to 16:00 in the Southeast Asian nation's 102 townships.

The general election is scheduled to be held in three phases, with the second phase set for Jan 11, 2026, followed by the third phase on Jan 25.

Currently, a total of 57 political parties are participating in the election, of which six are eligible to run nationwide.

The general election will elect members of Myanmar's Union Parliament and State and Region Parliaments. The new Union Parliament will then elect a new president to form a new Union Government.

According to the Union Election Commission, a total of 21,517 polling stations have been set up nationwide for the general election.

Myanmar's last general election was held in November 2020.

As the New Year holiday is drawing near, more and more people in China are choosing to celebrate the arrival of 2026 with travel.

According to umetrip, a Chinese travel-related mobile service provider, the flight booking reservations from major cities such as Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai to popular destinations including southern cities like Sanya, Haikou, Kunming, Guangzhou, and northern areas like Changbai Mountain and Harbin have increased significantly on a month-on-month basis for the New Year holiday.

As of Thursday, more than 2.71 million tickets have been booked in domestic routes, about 35 percent higher than that of last year, the data shows.

"Flights from Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Chengdu to Sanya; from Shanghai and Chengdu to Beihai; from Guangzhou and Shanghai to Changbai Mountains; and from Beijing to Kunming have all recorded seat occupancy rates exceeding 70 percent prior to the New Year holiday," said Yu Haiyan, deputy manager of revenue management office with China Southern Airlines' sales department.

Travel bookings for January 2026 show that ice-and-snow trips and warm-weather getaways remain the dominant themes, with their popularity expected to continue through the Spring Festival, the traditional Chinese New Year, which falls in February 2026.

"Air ticket bookings to Harbin, Shenyang, and Yanbian have increased by 18 percent, 36 percent, and 52 percent, respectively, while those for flights to Haikou and Sanya rose by 19 percent and 51 percent, respectively," said Shi Ke, a researcher of the Qunar Big Data Research Institute.