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How China counts holiday travel, and why the numbers differ
Holiday travel is counted in billions of person-trips. The total mixes carrier counts with a modelled car figure, over a window that differs by publisher.
Living page — numbers read from the sources on 2026-10-12, re-checked yearly.
On 8 October 2026 the transport ministry put the National Day holiday at 2.142 billion person-trips, 0.6% above the daily average of the 2025 Mid-Autumn and National Day holiday (Xinhua, from the ministry, 8 October 2026). The ministry’s own website carried a different set that day: 2.144 billion and 0.7%, both marked 预计, estimated (ministry release, 8 October 2026).
Two million person-trips, published within hours by the same government. It is the small version of a larger problem: the holiday figure is a composite whose definition changed in 2023 and 2024, measured over a window that differs by publisher, and revised afterwards.
What the number is made of
The metric is 全社会跨区域人员流动量. The annual statistics bulletin glosses it as the international, inter-city and urban-rural movement of people for business and tourism, counted across rail, road, water and air, excluding travel inside cities (2025 bulletin, note 4, June 2026).
It sums four items, one of them of a different kind:
- Commercial passenger volume: rail tickets, intercity buses, scheduled ferries and airline tickets, reported by the carriers.
- Non-commercial car trips on expressways and on ordinary national and provincial roads: private car journeys, recorded by machine and converted into person-trips.
The unit is 人次, person-trips: one person leaving and returning is two, and a family of four in one car is four person-trips and one vehicle. The bulletin’s footnote describes a volume of movement, not a number of movers, so reading the figure as “2.1 billion people travelled” is a units error.
For 2025 the four parts are rail 46.01亿, road 612.26亿, water 2.60亿 and air 7.70亿, which sum to the published 668.57亿; for 2024 they sum to 645.92亿 (2025 bulletin, June 2026; 2024 bulletin, June 2025).
Two definition changes, three years apart
Before 2023, Spring Festival statistics counted commercial passenger volume only.
The 2023 Spring Festival introduced 人员流动量: commercial volume plus person-trips in non-commercial cars on expressways. The 2024 Spring Festival added ordinary national and provincial roads, under the ministry’s 《客运统计改革实施方案》 (institute, 29 January 2024; CCTV News via a newspaper site, 31 January 2024). A trade-press account dates that programme to October 2023 (trade-press account, February 2025).
The holiday series does not step at the same date. The October 2023 National Day release already names both road types in its own definition (Xinhua via gov.cn, 7 October 2023). The research institute’s account puts the widening at the 2024 Spring Festival, a year later. I could not settle which is right.
The series that looks continuous from 2019 to 2026 is not. For 1–7 October 2019 the ministry reported “over 500 million” rail, road, water and air trips, road 480 million, water over 14.76 million (CCTV via a regional news site, quoting the ministry, 8 October 2019); the next day’s national paper gives rail “over 100 million” and air 12.8 million (Guangming Daily, 9 October 2019). The four parts add to about 608 million, or 87 million a day (my arithmetic), already above that headline.
The 2024 holiday release reported +23.1% against 2019 on a daily-average basis (ministry figures via a business daily, 8 October 2024). Back that out and the 2019 base is about 232 million a day, or 1.63 billion over seven days (my arithmetic): roughly 2.7 times the sum of the four 2019 mode figures.
The car column is a modelled estimate
The non-commercial car component is the largest part of the metric and the only one produced by calculation. In 2025 it was 49.733 billion of 66.857 billion, 74.4%, and it grew 4.7% while the four commercial lines together moved about 0.2% (my arithmetic from the same 2025 bulletin, June 2026).
The ministry’s planning institute describes the cycle: data aggregated at 04:00, reviewed by 07:00, released before 08:00 the next day (planning institute account, March 2024). A trade-press account names the inputs: passage records from around 12,000 toll stations, observations from around 12,000 automatic count stations on ordinary roads (trade-press account, February 2025).
No bulletin or holiday release I read prints the factor that converts vehicles into person-trips. At 2.0 a holiday’s car person-trips are twice the vehicle count; at 2.5 they are 25% higher, with no extra measurement.
Holiday length, and the daily average
National Day holidays differ in length, and Mid-Autumn sometimes merges with them, so totals are incomparable and the ministry compares daily averages.
| Holiday | Dates and days | Total (bn person-trips) | Daily average (m) | Change on daily average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 Mid-Autumn + National Day | 29 Sep – 6 Oct, 8 days | 2.204 | 275.5 | — |
| 2024 National Day | 1 – 7 Oct, 7 days | 2.003 | 286.1 | +3.9% |
| 2025 Mid-Autumn + National Day | 1 – 8 Oct, 8 days | 2.433 | 304.1 | +6.3% |
| 2026 National Day | 1 – 7 Oct, 7 days | 2.142 | 306.0 | +0.6% |
Totals, day counts and growth rates are from the release for each holiday (2023, 7 October 2023; 2024, 8 October 2024; 2025, 9 October 2025; 2026, 8 October 2026). Daily averages are my divisions of rounded totals; the releases work from unrounded ones and print 286.187 million for 2024, 3.04亿 for 2025, 3.06亿 for 2026.
The +0.6% for 2026 is a daily-average comparison, not a total. 2026 had seven holiday days. 2025 had eight, because Mid-Autumn fell on 6 October. On totals alone 2026 looks 12% smaller than 2025; on daily averages it is 0.6% larger.
The railway counts a different holiday
The railway publishes its own holiday transport window, longer in every year I checked than the public holiday. Its headline total is for the window, not the holiday.
| Holiday | Ministry window | Rail total (m) | Railway group window | Rail total (m) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 29 Sep – 6 Oct, 8 days | 141 | 27 Sep – 8 Oct, 12 days | 195 |
| 2024 | 1 – 7 Oct, 7 days | 131 | 29 Sep – 8 Oct, 10 days | 177 |
| 2025 | 1 – 8 Oct, 8 days | 154 | 29 Sep – 10 Oct, 12 days | 213 |
| 2026 | 1 – 7 Oct, 7 days | 152 | 23 Sep – 8 Oct, 16 days | 302 |
Ministry rail totals are from its holiday release for each year (2023; 2024; 2025; 2026); railway group totals from each operator summary’s own stated dates (2023, Economic Daily via gov.cn, 11 October 2023; 2024, 9 October 2024; 2025, 13 October 2025; 2026, 9 October 2026).
For one holiday the two official rail totals differ by a factor of 1.35 to 1.99. Neither is wrong. The 2026 window opened on 23 September, before Mid-Autumn, and closed on 8 October, after National Day: 16 days against the ministry’s seven. Longer windows pull the daily average down, because the extra days carry less traffic than the peak: 18.9 million a day over the group’s 16 days, against 21.7 million over the ministry’s seven (my divisions).
One figure I could not reproduce. The railway group reported the 2026 window at 302 million trips, up 24.6% year on year. Dividing 302 by 1.246 gives a 2025 base of 242 million, and no published 2025 railway figure I found is that size: the 2025 window as published was 213 million over 12 days. A like-for-like 16-day comparison would need the 23 September to 8 October 2025 volume, which is not published.
Same holiday, two vintages
Most holiday numbers appear twice: an estimate, then a final figure. The two rarely match.
- 2024 National Day: 2.008 billion and +4.1% (People’s Daily via gov.cn, 8 October 2024), then 2.003 billion, 286.187 million a day and +3.9% (Xinhua, 8 October 2024).
- 2025 Mid-Autumn + National Day: 2.432 billion and +6.2%, air 19.17 million (China Economic Net, from the ministry, 8 October 2025), then 2.433 billion, +6.3%, air revised to 19.14 million and water to 11.66 million (Xinhua via gov.cn, 9 October 2025).
- 2026 National Day: the ministry website’s estimate of 2.144 billion, +0.7%, rail 152.36 million, +13.1%; and the ministry’s figures the same day of 2.142 billion, +0.6%, rail 151.87 million, +12.7%, road 1.962 billion, water 10.93 million, air 16.92 million (ministry release; Xinhua, from the ministry, both 8 October 2026).
The same holiday, the same mode, two agencies:
- 2025 National Day air travel: 19.14 million in the ministry’s release (Xinhua via gov.cn, 9 October 2025), 19.138 million from the regulator (CAAC, 9 October 2025). One number, two roundings.
Annual figures move too, usually upwards. The rail regulator reported 2025 rail passenger volume of 4.588 billion in January 2026 (Xinhua, 8 January 2026); the 2025 railway statistical bulletin of 29 May 2026 gives 4.601 billion, a revision of +0.28% (my division). State railways: 4.255 billion in the railway group’s own January statement (Xinhua, 4 January 2026), then 4.258 billion in the bulletin (2025 railway statistical bulletin, 29 May 2026).
The annual series
Holiday figures are the annual series compressed into a week, where the definition change is visible.
| Year | Cross-region (bn) | Rail (bn) | Cars, non-commercial (bn) | Car share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 61.288 | 3.855 | 45.545 | 74.3% |
| 2024 | 64.592 | 4.312 | 47.509 | 73.6% |
| 2025 | 66.857 | 4.601 | 49.733 | 74.4% |
Sources: the 2023, 2024 and 2025 bulletins. Car shares are my divisions. The 2024 bulletin’s +4.8% for road implies a 2023 base of 565.74亿 against the 565.56亿 the 2023 bulletin printed (my arithmetic), so the annual series is restated as well.
Method
- Metric. The sum of rail, road, water and air passenger counts as defined in note 4 of the annual bulletin. Excludes buses, metro and taxis inside cities.
- Units. Chinese releases print 亿; I converted to billions and millions, so 24.33亿 reads as 2.433 billion.
- Holiday series. Ministry releases for each National Day holiday. Where a release gave both an estimate and a final figure, the table uses the final.
- Alignment. Day counts are the dates each release states, and comparisons use daily averages, as the ministry publishes. Railway windows come from each operator summary’s own stated dates, not the holiday dates.
- Revision check. The 2019 base is the 2024 daily average divided by 1.231, the growth the ministry published against 2019.
- Scope. All figures are published statistics. I had no access to the underlying counts, so I could not re-run the car model or rebuild a total from traffic data.
What I could not check
- The conversion factor that turns cars into person-trips. No release prints it, so the largest component cannot be rebuilt from traffic counts.
- Whether the holiday series was widened in 2023 or 2024: the October 2023 release names both road types, the research institute dates the addition to 2024.
- The text of 《客运统计改革实施方案》. Only second-hand accounts of it.
- The bases behind two published growth rates: the 2019 daily average (+23.1% in the 2024 release) and the railway group’s 2025 window (+24.6%). Neither back-solved total — 232 million a day, and 242 million over the window — matches a figure I could find published.
- The station counts in the car model. Both rounds of 12,000 come from trade press, not a ministry page.
- The civil aviation regulator’s own page for the 2026 National Day air total. Its 民航要闻 list, read 12 October 2026, carries the 2025 holiday figure but no 2026 equivalent, so the 16.92 million comes through the ministry’s release.
- Anything below the national total. Provincial holiday figures define “cross-region” locally, and I did not reconcile them with the national series.