China | Transport

Tootling back to the village

The lunar new-year holiday shows the strength of rural ties

The folks will be so impressed
|BEIJING

IT IS often described as the world’s biggest recurring movement of people: a 40-day period spanning the lunar new year (which fell on February 19th this year), during which astonishing numbers of people travel to join distant family members to celebrate the “spring festival”. Officials call this period chunyun, or spring transportation. The term evokes horror in the minds of many: trains so jammed that the only place to sit is on lavatory floors. This year the projected number of journeys on public transport during chunyun, which will end on March 15th, is nearly 2.9 billion, a 10% increase over the comparable period a year ago. Yet there are reasons to be a little less gloomy about what this entails.

The numbers suggest that despite rapid urbanisation, the pull of the countryside remains strong. Many of the journeys involve mingong, or peasant workers, as the nearly 300m migrants from the countryside who work in urban areas are often snootily called. Their families are often divided. Children and parents stay in the villages, because a fragmented social-security system makes it difficult for migrants to enjoy subsidised education and health care in the cities. Many migrants think it a good idea that some relatives remain: the stay-behinds can help retain land-use rights which might come in handy for the migrants if urban work dries up. The authorities themselves are keen for migrants to keep this backstop.

But migration patterns are changing. Wang Kan of the China Institute of Industrial Relations says that, during chunyun, trips between provinces have been declining. This is because migrants are often working closer to home, thanks to the relocation of some industries away from the coast to inland provinces where labour is cheaper. “We can see the emergence of more regional hubs,” says Mr Wang. No longer is the chunyun rush so concentrated in the biggest and wealthiest cities.

Analysing chunyun data is difficult. Xiaohui Liang of Renmin University says that companies have recently begun providing private long-distance coach transport for their workers. These trips do not get counted in official statistics. Other workers, he says, get counted twice if they go by train to a regional hub and from there continue by bus to their hometowns. A single worker doing this in both directions would account for four chunyun journeys.

The growth of an urban middle class further complicates the picture. Journeys made by holiday tourists, with no rural reunion in mind, are on the rise. Researchers had long felt it safe to assume that trips taken on pricey high-speed trains were made by such travellers. But according to Mr Wang, migrant workers are increasingly opting for the speed and comfort of the more expensive trains. This, he says, suggests that the purchasing power of migrants is on the rise. Some are even heading back to their villages in newly bought cars (perhaps with paying passengers to offset some of the cost).

One source of data on this year’s travel rush is Alibaba, an e-commerce firm which has analysed the sale of train tickets through Alitrip, its online travel business. In a new trend this year, the company says, some families are migrating in reverse for their holiday reunions. Alibaba says there has been a “tremendous increase” in the number of elderly parents travelling from their rural homes to industrial centres such as the southern city of Guangzhou to spend the festival with their children. That implies that some migrants are now proud enough of their new urban homes to begin showing off.

This article appeared in the China section of the print edition under the headline "Tootling back to the village"

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