China’s Ministry of Transport (MoT) confirmed late Saturday that the 2026 Spring Festival travel season—better known as chunyun—has set a new benchmark for human mobility inside one country. On 20 February alone, 352.999 million cross-regional passenger movements were recorded across rail, air, highway, and waterway networks, a 12.3 percent jump on the comparable day in 2025. The MoT’s integrated traffic control platform drew data from 16,000 rail services, 15,800 commercial flights, 1.3 million inter-provincial bus departures and hundreds of ferry routes to arrive at the figure. (english.news.cn)
Although chunyun is traditionally associated with family reunions, 2026 marks the first time since the pandemic that corporate travel has returned to pre-COVID velocity. Multinational manufacturers in the Yangtze River Delta told the China Global Mobility Forum that they had to stagger production start-ups because a higher-than-expected share of migrant staff opted to take the full nine-day statutory break plus paid leave. Airlines added more than 2,600 extra domestic sectors during the week, while China State Railway deployed 14 high-speed “night trains” on trunk corridors such as Beijing-Guangzhou to absorb spill-over demand.
Against this backdrop of surging domestic traffic, overseas managers and travelers should also be thinking about the paperwork required just to get through immigration. VisaHQ’s online portal (https://www.visahq.com/china/) streamlines China visa processing, offering step-by-step guidance, document checks and door-to-door courier options—an especially valuable shortcut when consular appointments are scarce during peak travel weeks.
![China’s Spring Festival Travel Rush Breaks All-Time Single-Day Record]()
For businesses relocating expatriates or flying in regional executives, the surge highlighted both opportunities and pain points. Hotel rates in Tier-1 cities rose by between 35 and 60 percent compared with normal February levels, and rental car shortages were reported in Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi’an. However, the sheer scale of movement also underlines the resilience of China’s transport infrastructure: Beijing Daxing Airport operated at 109 percent of its design capacity without major delays, thanks to a newly-commissioned dual-runway optimisation program.
The MoT projects 9.5 billion passenger trips over the 40-day chunyun window (2 February–13 March). While most are domestic, a growing slice involves cross-border commutes—particularly Shenzhen-Hong Kong and Zhejiang-Japan business shuttles—which means global mobility managers must factor in knock-on effects such as slot shortages and hotel compression on inbound itineraries. Forward-looking corporates are already pushing for “Spring Festival black-out” clauses in assignment policies, similar to the golden-week restrictions used in Japan.
From a policy standpoint, the record figures strengthen Beijing’s argument that further liberalisation—such as enlarging the list of countries qualifying for 30-day visa-free entry—can be absorbed by existing infrastructure. The MoT statement ended with a pledge to integrate immigration e-gates with rail and civil-aviation booking platforms before the 2027 peak, a move that would simplify multimodal journeys for foreign residents and frequent business travellers alike.
Although chunyun is traditionally associated with family reunions, 2026 marks the first time since the pandemic that corporate travel has returned to pre-COVID velocity. Multinational manufacturers in the Yangtze River Delta told the China Global Mobility Forum that they had to stagger production start-ups because a higher-than-expected share of migrant staff opted to take the full nine-day statutory break plus paid leave. Airlines added more than 2,600 extra domestic sectors during the week, while China State Railway deployed 14 high-speed “night trains” on trunk corridors such as Beijing-Guangzhou to absorb spill-over demand.
Against this backdrop of surging domestic traffic, overseas managers and travelers should also be thinking about the paperwork required just to get through immigration. VisaHQ’s online portal (https://www.visahq.com/china/) streamlines China visa processing, offering step-by-step guidance, document checks and door-to-door courier options—an especially valuable shortcut when consular appointments are scarce during peak travel weeks.
For businesses relocating expatriates or flying in regional executives, the surge highlighted both opportunities and pain points. Hotel rates in Tier-1 cities rose by between 35 and 60 percent compared with normal February levels, and rental car shortages were reported in Chengdu, Chongqing and Xi’an. However, the sheer scale of movement also underlines the resilience of China’s transport infrastructure: Beijing Daxing Airport operated at 109 percent of its design capacity without major delays, thanks to a newly-commissioned dual-runway optimisation program.
The MoT projects 9.5 billion passenger trips over the 40-day chunyun window (2 February–13 March). While most are domestic, a growing slice involves cross-border commutes—particularly Shenzhen-Hong Kong and Zhejiang-Japan business shuttles—which means global mobility managers must factor in knock-on effects such as slot shortages and hotel compression on inbound itineraries. Forward-looking corporates are already pushing for “Spring Festival black-out” clauses in assignment policies, similar to the golden-week restrictions used in Japan.
From a policy standpoint, the record figures strengthen Beijing’s argument that further liberalisation—such as enlarging the list of countries qualifying for 30-day visa-free entry—can be absorbed by existing infrastructure. The MoT statement ended with a pledge to integrate immigration e-gates with rail and civil-aviation booking platforms before the 2027 peak, a move that would simplify multimodal journeys for foreign residents and frequent business travellers alike.
