China’s railway set a record during the Labor Day holiday

China National Railway Group today said that ticket booking channels sold a total of 117 million train tickets during the May 1 holiday, which lasted until May 5.

The rail service served 24.8 million passengers on May 1, marking a record high for passengers in one day, and about 19.7 million passengers on May 2. The number of passengers using Chinese railways on May 1 this year is 1.7 million higher than in 2025.

The numbers show buoyant holiday travel in China, and signal a potential pick-up in consumer spending, which has remained weak since the Covid-19 pandemic in the world’s second-largest economy. To meet increased travel demand during this year’s holidays, the railway network has added thousands of trains.

The national transportation agency earlier predicted passenger traffic would peak on railways, highways, civil aviation and waterways nationwide on the first day of the holiday. Consumption in the fields of culture, tourism and cinema also witnessed strong growth.

Jiang Yiyi, a tourism and sports expert at Beijing Sports University, said that holiday consumption growth is built on the continued improvement of the overall Chinese economy. On the other hand, local efforts to innovate cultural and tourism products, create new consumption scenarios and improve service quality, have further supported the sustainable recovery of the holiday tourism market.

China in recent years has promoted the construction of high-speed railways to enhance traffic connections. During the period 2021-2025, the country has built and put into operation 12,000 km of high-speed railways.

As of December 2025, the total length of China’s high-speed rail network exceeds 50,000 km, an increase of 32% compared to the end of 2020. This is the longest high-speed rail network in the world, exceeding the total length of all other countries combined and about 10,000 km longer than the Earth’s circumference.

China’s high-speed rail system is present in 97% of cities with a population of over 500,000 people, transporting about 16 million people every day, equivalent to the population of a megacity. This system connects major economic centers and urban clusters, as well as districts and less developed areas, serving as a socio-economic boost for these areas.