Chinese travelers are set to embark on a surge of overseas trips during the upcoming Spring Festival holiday, with Russia, Australia and Thailand being top destinations, while Japan's popularity has plummeted amid strained bilateral relations, according to travel agencies and media reports.
The Spring Festival, also known as the Chinese New Year, lands on Feb 17 this year, and is the most important traditional festival for the Chinese and a time for family reunions. This year's Spring Festival holiday runs for nine days from Feb 15.
According to Shanghai Spring International Travel Service, the travel unit of budget carrier Spring Airlines, tour group bookings to Russia have more than doubled compared to the same period last year.
Trip.com, China's largest online travel booking platform, reported over a 100-percent increase year on year in the number of tourists visiting Australia, reflecting strong recovery in long-haul travel.
In contrast, simmering political tension with Japan has eroded its appeal for Chinese visitors, who previously made it a top choice, according to reports on Thursday.
Kyodo News noted on the same day that during the first week of China's 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, which started on Feb 2, flights between the two countries decreased by 1,292 from the previous year, a drop of 49.2 percent.
Domestically, travel demand is split between tropical and snowy getaways, as trips to the country's southernmost island province of Hainan and northeastern Changbai Mountain are especially popular, media outlets said.
China's outbound tourism surges for Spring Festival, Japan sees sharp decline
A global poll launched by the China Global Television Network (CGTN) on Wednesday shows that the scandal over the Epstein files has dismantled America's image as a human rights beacon and exposed systemic corruption within the U.S. political and judicial systems.
The 24-hour survey across CGTN's five language platforms drew some 9,700 participants.
The survey showed 97.1 percent of respondents express deep concern that the widespread moral decay among the elite class revealed by the Epstein case has severely offended human conscience, while 95.6 percent of respondents believe that the U.S. judicial system applies "double standards" when dealing with the powerful elite.
The poll also showed that 93.9 percent of respondents believe that this "selective transparency" by the U.S. Department of Justice has reduced the U.S. judicial system to a "protective umbrella" for the privileged class.
Meanwhile, 89.8 percent of respondents criticize the long-standing inaction of the U.S. judicial system, stating that this case has severely damaged the credibility of the American legal system.
The results of the survey show that the American Dream has utterly degenerated into a delusion of "privilege preying on humanity," CGTN said on Thursday.
The case of the late U.S. financier and convicted sex offender Jeffery Epstein has shocked the world. Late last month, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released the remaining batch of documents of the so-called Epstein files, totaling some three million pages, with 2,000 video segments and 180,000 images included, sparking serious scrutiny across the Atlantic and in several other countries.
The latest release of related documents prompted the resignation of several political figures over the nature of their ties to Epstein, who died under mysterious circumstances while in federal custody in 2019.
The handling of the files themselves has been another source of outrage, with numerous redactions raising further questions about who is being protected, while errors by the DOJ exposed a significant amount of victim information, including the names and personal details of nearly 100 victims, causing further fury.
Epstein files scandal exposes deep-rooted corruption in US political, judicial systems: CGTN poll
