Nanfang Daily:

This year's Spring Festival travel rush was the first since China optimized its COVID-19 prevention and control measures. What was the overall performance of the transportation sector? What supporting measures did the 2023 Spring Festival Transportation Special Group take during the travel rush? Thank you.

Li Xiaopeng:

Thanks for your questions. As you said, this year's Spring Festival travel rush was the first of its kind since China's COVID-19 response entered a new stage, making it the most uncertain, complicated and challenging one in recent years. The CPC Central Committee and the State Council attached great importance to it. On Jan. 18, General Secretary Xi Jinping extended festive greetings to all Chinese people when he held nationwide virtual talks with the general public. He underscored the importance of Spring Festival travel to people's immediate interests, economic development, and social stability and made clear requests to ensure safe and sound trips during the travel rush. 

The MOT and relevant departments resolutely implemented the important instructions of General Secretary Xi Jinping, as well as the decisions and deployments of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. A special group for the Spring Festival travel rush was set up, led by the MOT, and involved 16 ministries and units. We utilized our maximum capacity and provided our best services to coordinate epidemic prevention and control with transportation services. We also created a safe, healthy, convenient, and comfortable transportation experience for people and ensured the smooth delivery of all sorts of key materials.

This year's Spring Festival travel rush generally had the following features. First, the movement of people increased substantially. There was a sharp recovery in passenger traffic as people returned to their hometowns for family reunions, visited relatives and friends, enjoyed tourism and holidays, and traveled for business. According to incomplete statistics, passenger trips exceeded 4.7 billion, an increase of nearly 30% over 2022, the highest number for the Spring Festival travel rush since 2020. The CPC Central Committee's major judgment on the epidemic situation, major decisions on the prevention and control work, and major adjustments in prevention and control strategies have proven completely correct. The policy was successfully implemented, recognized by the people, and enormously effective. China's traffic volume hit 4.7 billion trips over 40 days, reflecting the country's mobile, developing, vibrant and hopeful nature.

Second, self-driving trips reached a record high. Amid the 40-day travel rush this year, there were about 1.184 billion vehicle trips on expressways, carrying more than 3.1 billion passengers. The daily average number of passenger cars reached 29.6 million, with the single-day tally exceeding 60 million on the sixth day of the first lunar month. The share of vehicle trips in the total transfer of personnel jumped to 66% from 47% in 2019.

Third, trips via public transport recovered significantly. It reached about 1.6 billion during the 40-day travel rush this year, an increase of more than 50% over 2022, resuming to about 50% of the level in 2019.

Fourth, transport and logistics functioned smoothly and orderly. During the 40-day Spring Festival travel rush, the transportation of key materials was maintained relatively smooth, meeting the demands of material transportation in medical treatment, energy, food, production and living, spring plowing and other fields.

Fifth, epidemic prevention and control policies were steadily implemented. The epidemic response measures during the travel rush were specified and carefully carried out. Working staff strictly implemented protection and control measures, while the public actively cooperated with them to ensure their individual health protection. Therefore, cross-infection was prevented to the maximum extent and the health of passengers and staff was guaranteed during the large-scale flow of people and logistics.

This year's Spring Festival travel rush ended successfully, with people's satisfaction and sense of fulfillment being significantly enhanced. We mainly adopted the following three measures. First, we took stronger steps to ensure safety of transportation. We carried out actions to identify and address safety hazards in key areas, strengthened our ability to cope with severe weather, and made efforts to raise people's awareness of safe travel. All these efforts have resulted in generally stable and safe transportation during the travel rush. Second, we carried out epidemic prevention and control in a targeted and well-planned manner. We put in place specified prevention and control measures for transport stations and vehicles, strengthened the protection of working staff, and implemented measures designed for combating Class B infectious diseases. Third, we enhanced the organization and arrangement of traffic capacity. In terms of transportation capacity, we strengthened the analysis, organization and arrangement in key areas at key periods to tap the potential and meet the demands of passengers. Regarding the expressway network, we enhanced monitoring and ensured smooth transport. In terms of smooth transportation and logistics, we prioritized unimpeded traffic by consolidating our work in coordination and dispatch. We maintained steady operations during the Spring Festival travel rush through these efforts. In particular, we must point out that all localities and government departments attached great importance to the travel rush. Chief officials in some provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities directly guided the work and some even personally traveled to the stations for inspections or traffic arrangement. With the concerted efforts of the Spring Festival travel rush task force, and the cooperation from railways, highways, waterways, civil aviation, the postal service, and various transport fields, as well as officials and workers at grass-roots levels, who dedicated themselves to the work, the smooth Spring Festival travel rush was guaranteed.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt appreciation and sincere greetings to officials and workers from all departments and localities, as well as those frontline workers for their hard work and dedication, and to the public for their understanding and support. In particular, I should mention that media workers played an important role in reporting the Spring Festival travel rush in a dynamic and much deeper way. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to them. Of course, we are well aware that there is still room for us to improve our work relating to the Spring Festival travel rush since it is very important and the requirements of the people are still high. In the future, we will make persistent efforts and continue to do better work for the Spring Festival travel rush and better meet the needs of the people. We also need your help and supervision in this respect, as well as good opinions and suggestions. Thanks.