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The View | Why China would be wise to analyse its Lunar New Year travel data

  • The post-pandemic trend of the young and mobile increasingly moving out of megacities is shaping the country’s urbanisation and regional development
  • Data from the annual travel rush starting next month will provide vital input for Beijing’s future urban planning

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Wang Lingli, a new-generation farmer who moved back to her hometown to farm in 2015, checks the condition of rapeseed in Longxing township of Chengdu, Sichuan, on October 10. China’s young people are increasingly leaving the biggest cities in search of affordable housing and a more balanced lifestyle. Photo: Xinhua
In the next few weeks, we will again witness what has been called the world’s largest annual human migration – China’s Lunar New Year holiday travel. Compared to a decade ago, the traffic radiating from China’s megacities is expected to diminish, replaced by denser intra-provincial traffic.
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Nearly two-thirds of China’s population live in cities today. With the nation now on the final lap of its urbanisation journey, it is vital for officials to rigorously fine-tune regional planning using detailed analytics.
Shaped by different forces, populations in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen have peaked. Young people are leaving the biggest cities in search of affordable housing and a more balanced lifestyle – if they are not “lying flat”. As more youth become freelancers, those who are engaged in live-streaming e-commerce or social media may still stay in large cities but not necessarily the biggest ones. Amid China’s ageing population, some retirees are also moving out of the biggest cities.
Inland cities, from Wuhan to Chengdu, are on the rise while Dongguan and Foshan have become more complementary to Shenzhen and Guangzhou. Interconnected infrastructure means the Greater Bay Area’s municipalities are now more integrated.

On the surface, the trend may appear to mirror the dispersion of knowledge workers in the US from the coasts to inland cities. Post pandemic, there has been a global shift towards remote working and lower city densities, with tier-2 and tier-3 cities growing at the expense of tier-1 cities. But while affordability and lifestyle choices may be common forces in both the US and China, a unique set of factors is at play in China.

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First, China’s superb infrastructure has enabled the emergence of interconnected urban systems, such as the Greater Bay Area, which knit together urban clusters and satellite cities into cohesive metro areas.
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