A Fuxing high-speed train travels along the rails in Changzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province on January 8, 2026. China's railways handled nearly 4.59 billion passenger trips in 2025, up 6.4 percent year-on-year, underpinned by a steadily expanding and modernizing rail transport system, official data showed. Photo: VCG

China witnessed a surge in travel during the nine-day Spring Festival holiday that ended on Monday, underscoring the robust momentum of the domestic economy and reflecting the resilience and strong internal drivers of the Chinese economy.

Total cross-regional passenger trips exceeded 2.8 billion during the holiday, with a daily average of 311 million, an 8.2 percent increase year-on-year, setting a new record, CCTV News reported on Tuesday, citing data from the Ministry of Transport.

Gao Bo, an official of the ministry, said that every day from February 19 to 23, passenger flows exceeded historical peaks. On February 22, cross-regional passenger trips reached 380 million, a new single-day peak.

In addition, the average daily passenger volume of railways, highways and waterways each increased by more than 10 percent year-on-year, while that of civil aviation increased by 7.3 percent year-on-year.

The Spring Festival, also known as Chinese New Year, fell on February 17 this year. The official holiday lasted nine days.

During that period, Chinese railways carried 121 million passenger trips, up 11.5 percent from the Spring Festival travel period last year, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Tuesday, citing data from China State Railway Group Co.

On Monday, 18.733 million passengers were transported, setting a new one-day record during the Spring Festival travel season, China's national railway operator said. 

The operator said that the figure was driven by a mix of passengers returning home, work-related travel, and tourism flows, keeping passenger traffic at a high level. 

The robust holiday performance has provided a strong opening for both tourism and broader consumption this year, Yang Jinsong, a tourism expert with the China Tourism Academy, told the Global Times.

Spending on culture and tourism has increasingly become a stable and recurring driver of demand, as highlighted during the just-concluded holidays, with the overall consumption mix shifting toward services-oriented spending, Yang said. The sector is also accelerating its push for higher-quality development to better align with evolving consumer preferences, he added.

China witnessed a record 596 million domestic tourist trips during the nine-day Spring Festival holiday, up 95 million from the eight-day 2025 Spring Festival holiday, according to data released by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on Tuesday.

Tourists spent more than 803.48 billion yuan ($116 billion) on domestic trips during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday. Both the number of holiday tourists and spending reached record highs, data showed.

During this year's Spring Festival holiday, national border inspection authorities saw a total of 17.796 million cross-border trips made by Chinese and foreign nationals, averaging 1.977 million per day, up 10.1 percent compared with last year's Spring Festival holiday, the National Immigration Administration said on Tuesday.

Data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) showed that during the 2026 Spring Festival holiday, the country's civil aviation industry transported a cumulative total of 22.05 million passengers, with an average of 2.45 million per day, up 7.7 percent compared with the same period of the 2025 Spring Festival travel season. 

A total of 171,000 flights were operated, with an average of 18,956 flights per day, a 4.4 percent increase from the same period in 2025, the CAAC said.