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This is Round Table.
Hold on tight everybody the 2025 spring festival travel rush has officially begun with an estimated nine billion trips that spans 40 days China is gearing up for the world's largest annual human migration let the countdown to the Chinese new year began And, sitting hunched your phone or computer all
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Coming to you live from Beijing.
This is Roundtable, I'm He Yeung.
For today's program, I'm joined by Steve Hatherle, and Ding Hong in the studio.
First on today's show!
For every Chinese person Spring Festival or the Chinese New Year is a time to come home no matter how far you've traveled.
This year around 9 billion trips are expected to be made across China's vast 9 .6 million square kilometer landscape.
January 14 marks the start of this year's Spring Festival travel rush with this massive human movement comes a huge challenge for the nation's transportation system.
But don't worry, everyone's rising to the challenge.
With smarter ticketing, faster trains, and new technology, the 2025 Spring Festival Travel Rush is shaping up to be one of the most exciting yet.
Let's buckle up, and take on this wild ride together.
So guys for those who might not know, what is the spring festival travel rush or ch unit we say in Chinese it?
Why does it matter so much?
well it refers to the large -scale transportation phenomenon that occurs during the Chinese New Year period featuring say billions of passenger troops during this particular period.
It is arguably the the largest the largest -scale human migration as some western press love to describe it this particular phenomenon.
um I think its origin really lies in the tradition of family reunion during the spring festival for Chinese people people would like this idea that you need to go back home from the city you work and live to be with your families and over the years this migration has really become a national event and really
a a symbol of Chinese culture and family values I guess.
Just walking around the office chatting with people.
People are starting to get excited that the holiday is coming.
It's the biggest holiday in China and I hear that number thrown around 9 billion passenger trips and when I say this to my Chinese colleagues, 9 billion?
The reaction is yep.
But to me as a Canadian and new in China.
What? That's a crazy high number of people traveling during the season and it does, it is testament isn't it to how important this holiday actually is and I guess that the way it's done now this massive migration of people is completely different than the way it would have been say oh gosh I don't know
20 30 40 50 years ago because now we have high speed trains here in the country, airlines, highways, you've got digital tools like 5G and Big Data and AI helping out along the way.
And I guess that's really significantly supported the growth and modernization of the travel period.
And I think that's a fair statement.
Would you agree with that?
That it's just totally different now than the way it used to be?
I think it is quite different in the sense that you did mention that there are more choices for people to travel.
Also, if we may travel a little bit further back in history, when it was the olden days when people didn't used to migrate to another city to live and work, then there wouldn't be so much oral rush, because you'd be so nearby your hometown, but as time moves on as the economy develops, as now, Chinese
people don't even bat an eye when you say, oh, you hundreds of miles, thousands of miles away from your ancestral town.
Because people live farther apart, and therefore, there's a need to come back home for this most special holiday for the Chinese people.
I suppose that explains why it's so important.
What do you think? What's the significance of recordings for the Chinese people?
Yeah, exactly. It's about family reunion — this idea that you need to return, go back, home, etc., etc.
But, one observation of mine is that in the past, it sounds like those long distance train traveling or traveling by bus for some of the shorter distances.
These were some of the main channels in the past.
Nowadays — because cars, private vehicles have become a so common for average Chinese families and households I feel like self -driving is becoming the dominant mode of transportation the figure I am reading about is that for this year self -driving will remain the dominant mode of transportation accounting
for seven point two billion trips out of those nine billion that Steve mentioned with some eighty percent of the total inter -regional traveling so yeah I feel like the rules remains the same but the ways of traveling are changing yes and might just add one more point self -driving that basically means
you drive your own car home and that's not something that would be so common 20 years ago with increasing car ownership in this country then it becomes more common for people to..
Oh instead of booking tickets which Which can be a headache, which we can get into.
Driving your own car home, you know, it's more convenient.
But the traffic is going to be...
It's going to be packed on the highway.
Yeah. The traffic, though, I guess is just something that people deal with because it doesn't come as a surprise, right?
Nobody's surprised when the traffic's bad during the biggest holiday of the year.
Actually, they say peak traffic on highways may set new records this coming holiday.
And in terms of some numbers for railway and civil aviation passenger trips, 510 million railway trips, 19 million passenger flights, and those will hit historic highs as well.
It's gonna be a busy busy busy time of year for everyone.
Yes, and also considering this year the Spring Festival falls earlier, according to the traditional Chinese calendar which varies the dates every year.
but it's earlier this year than usual.
So, people are saying that this means that the students who finish the school year and are busy and are going home are going to be sort of on the way with all these other people who are travelling home and therefore there's more congestion, more traffic this year for the Spring Festival travel rush.
so the holiday itself usually falls a little bit later on the calendar therefore that typically would exclude the students from this travel rush but that's not the case this year?
Well this year now the spring festival is celebrated at the end of of January so but usually spring festival is celebrated in the in February.
Yeah yeah. So i suppose Yeah, the students, I'm not sure if they're very happy about this but you are being sort of swooped into this big travel rush which can be a little, can be kind of exciting for some people.
And also could you guys tell us a bit more about how is this year's stocks are going to be different from previous years?
Well, this year's upcoming Ph cup is expected to see more than 510 million railway passengers.
That means an average of 12 .7 million passengers per day, marking a 5 .5 % increase compared to the situation in 2024.
Now, I guess one of the reasons behind this increase is that there will be an eight -day holiday for the Spring Festival after the rescheduled China's national holiday system.
So a longer holiday would I guess it's would incentivize more people to travel or to engage in other kinds of activities.
And there is another reason...
China's New Year's Eve...
New Year's Eve's dinner known as n..
in Chinese Reunion dinner.
It is really a traditional family meal.
It is seen as the most significant dinner of the Year for the whole family, so the need to go home for this very reunion dinner contributes to the large number of travelers during the holiday.
And I guess there are challenges as well, when we talk about a new situation.
So, this dinner, the New Year's Eve dinner, this is the most important dinner of the year for the family.
So getting home on time for that dinner would be of utmost importance.
I believe so. If you missed the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, then it's almost like you missed the Chinese New Year celebration at home.
It's almost a ritual for your family, especially if your elderly people, the elderly generation are still alive, right?
You need all these kinds of concentration, reunion of the elderly generation, the parents' generation, the offspring' generation, the offspring of the offspring, the four generations together.
I was thinking, maybe in modern times it might be more convenient for people to travel a couple of days into the holiday.
You know, maybe a day after the New Year's Eve dinner or something like that, but no no no it's important to get home for the for the New Year's Eve dinner I think so although it can't be a little bit difficult for some families for example let's say if you're married and sometimes it could result in a major discussion between the couple.
Which family's house do we go to?
And often at least in my family, we used to always go to my my paternal grandmas for the New Year's Eve dinner, and it'd be great if we could go visit my maternal grandparents a day after that, if possible.
So, but every family has their own traditions and to avoid getting into a fight, some couples might try to get both sets of parents together.
Yeah, but the New Years Eve dinner is definitely a dinner that holds significance for the Chinese people.
Dinghong, you mentioned some of the challenges.
One of the challenges would be moving not only all the people, I would think, but the freight transport as well during the Spring Festival period, and as a result of those potential problems or potential challenges, transport authorities, they're going to be improving the scheduling of resources to
help meet the very high demand by enhancing transport capacity during peak times and That will help to ensure the timely delivery of the very essential goods take the train for example Public welfare trains with better prices and also trains in rural areas Those are going to be supported to facilitate
public travel so each day more than 14 ,000 passenger trains will be scheduled There's going to be an additional 500 ,000 seats available every single day, and that's a 4 % year -on -year increase in seating capacity, so authorities are aware that there will be more traveling by people done this year, that there
will be more need for the transport of goods as well, and they're taking steps to ensure that everything goes smoothly.
Yes, indeed. And, aside from train travel and freight and transportation, we've seen in recent years that China has become the world's biggest market for electric vehicles and lots of electric vehicles are going to be hitting the highway when it's cold weather!
And we know that it might make charging a bit of a headache, but we see that the companies and those involved are trying to, they're getting ready for this whole slew of electric vehicles hitting the road.
By the end of November 2024 there were 33 ,100 charging piles.
They're called charging piles.
And 49 ,300 charging parking spaces in highway service areas.
That's an increase from 2023 with 97 % of service areas now equipped with charging facilities.
facilities. And this is a big deal because they've expanded the use of high -power fast chargers.
Some provinces are building ultra -fast charging stations or have built.
They've installed mobile emergency charging units in high demand areas.
This is pretty cool.
There will be robots used in some regions for some flexible service options.
They've coordinated charging resources by directing vehicles to perhaps some less congested charging stations, that would help alleviate the waiting times at the more popular or the busier ones.
And then they're also providing real -time information on charging facility statuses, or status via various platforms.
And all of that will help drivers plan their routes and charging stops in advance.
Yeah, so I guess the idea is that while charging or charging in queues, those very long lines, remain a challenge.
That's undeniable, but really, efforts are ongoing to try to improve the charging services and ensure convenient and eco -friendly traveling experiences for EV drivers.
And I want to talk a little bit about this train ticketing, booking platform economy.
In Chinese we call it Yao or Samuel.
But, how to say that in English?
Platform 12306, let's put it this way.
This is the official platform of online railway ticket booking, and for the upcoming oscilling, it is piloting a function called Automatic Ticket Order Submission for long distance trains running between major cities like Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, etc.
mmm this particular service is allowing passengers to pre -fill orders some 16 days before the departure time but train January the 14th and a fabulous 22nd and each user on this platform can have up to 60 train options per order well that's a lot and up to six pending orders and for each order you can book
tickets for nine passengers.
I'm not sure innovative is the way to put it, but it is positively catering to the need of train travelers, that's for sure.
They're trying to increase your odds of getting...
It can kind of be like winning the lottery a little bit, getting a train ticket, so all All this is being done to help increase the chances of you getting your tickets.
I mean, it is quite astounding, isn't it?
You can choose up to 60 different train schedules, 60 different options.
It doesn't mean you have to go on 60 different trains, it's just, you know, you're trying to book one, but you can fill out 60 if you want, and then you can book a maximum of nine passengers.
So if you're traveling with your family members, you know.
You can add all of their information in there as well.
And it's being done, I guess, to simplify the process and also to help people get a better chance of getting a ticket.
Yeah, to maximize your chance of getting a train ticket home.
And I still remember when this platform, this official platform of booking railway tickets, one, two, three, oh six first came online on January 30th, 2010.
It was met with great enthusiasm because before that we used to have to go to the train station in person, wait in long queues in the cold to get these tickets for going home for Spring Festival.
but ever since this online platform has been established, it experienced growing pains in the first few years.
I remember the hotline was, oh, it crashed again.
I was gonna say it probably crashed.
Oh, multiple times, I guess.
For the first year and second year, I'm pretty sure I did, because all of a sudden, you have hundreds of millions of people going onto the site for at the same time trying to get tickets, And of course, it will overwhelm the server.
Well, here's some numbers to emphasize your point.
Official said during the 2020 spring festival travel rush, the 12306 ticketing system experienced a peak of, get this, 149 .5 billion clicks in one day.
Now, let's break down that number.
that means the system faced over 1 .7 million clicks per second per what?
1 .7 million more, that's, find a system that can handle that level of traffic that's like the equivalent of every person in China clicking 100 times a day on 12306 that was back in 2020 so they want to make sure that they can handle it.
Of course you know when a new system starts back in 2010 you said, they'll experience difficulties like that.
Those numbers are mind -blowing.
I know. And the fact that we don't experience the app or site crashing anymore, I think already, is something I'm very interested to know to look under the hood in seeing what the programmers did to ensure this very important digital infrastructure is well and dandy for so many people to get their tickets.
Yeah, and they've done that this year.
They've optimized resource allocation, they've expanded their network bandwidth and enhance cloud service capacity.
They've also implemented security risk prevention measures to handle this large -scale access.
So they're doing what they need to do to make sure it goes smoothly.
It's almost like you've been waiting, these programmers have been waiting a whole year and this is the moment that you shine to make sure it works.
Yeah, that's a right.
And just pray everything goes OK.
So this is it, huh?
2306 is like the place to go for your train tickets in China, because I know that there are other platforms that you can buy your train tickets through but I guess if you correct me if I'm wrong, please.
Even if you get your train tickets through another platform they're still going through 1, 2, 3, 0, 6.
It's just you're adding a middle.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think that's the experience I have had.
Yeah, ultimately it's connected.
Yeah, indeed. And when you have, we're estimating 90, sorry, nine billion trips happening over a period of 40 days.
What kind of impact does the spring festival travel rush have on China's economy?
Well, I feel like nowadays, we need to pay attention who is traveling.
I mean, economy is one side, but I feel like the Spring Festival travel rush is more often, or more importantly a reflection of the social dynamics and social changes taking place.
Initially, the majority of Spring Festival travelers were migrant workers and students, going back home.
But now as urbanization progressed, as some migrant workers began to settle in cities, we are also seeing some elderly parents of migrant workers beginning to join this renewing rush to reunite with their children.
This trend has led to the rise of the elderly migrant group, and this is one thing.
And when we talk about the economy.
I feel like, for example, there is delivery businesses, for example, it is expected that by the year 2025, the reduction in logistics costs for society as a home will reach 300 billion won, which will provide strong support for the development of the real economy, especially manufacturing.
That's the analysis by certain economists.
We are seeing some major express delivery companies like JD, etc.
in China. They have announced their no closure during the spring festival service plans to meet the increasing logistical demands during the holiday.
These companies, they have implemented this policy in order to ensure smooth logistics, expanding air, and the ground transport networks and they are providing incentives and bonuses in order to compensate the feeling of loss of family reunion for their frontline workers.
When they're on the post.
And let me just add one more point to what you're saying here Dean reserves.
That's pretty much in the past when people used to bring a whole bunch of bags, carry them with them, as they travel.
Now, we don't need to do that.
You can just deliver, make that delivery of all these bags, these gifts that you want to sent home from the city where you are living at.
And then post everything through delivery and you can just go home empty -handed.
And when you arrive in your home destination, all this stuff is waiting for you at the doorstep.
And we thank those wonderful delivery people in advance for all their hard work during the holiday season.
There's also the recently launched online Chinese New Year's shopping festival started January 7th, going until February 5th.
It marks the first major online event of the year by the ministry of commerce and there they hope to capitalize on the recent inclusion of the Spring Festival in China's intangible cultural heritage list.
Lots of shopping to be done.
That's why we need all the deliveries because there'shed lots of shopping being done.
Yes, and the spring festival travel rush, this massive annual migration speaks volumes about the deep cultural and emotional bonds that Chinese people have with our families.
It shows how important the Spring Festival is as a time for reunion, where distance is no obstacle, and the Journey Home is one of love, tradition, and togetherness.
It's the beautiful reminder of how far China has become and the strength of its people coming together, year after year, to honor what really matters.
Everybody stick around.
We will be back after this break.
