Macau recorded a new historic high of entries and exits at the borders of the Chinese region, with ten days left until the Lunar New Year, the largest annual migration in the world, it was announced this Sunday, February 8th. The Macau Public Security Police (PSP) said the territory’s borders recorded the crossing of around 867,000 people on Saturday, the highest number since daily records began.
In a statement, the PSP said that the largest share of movements (39.1%) were due to tourists. Macau, world capital of casinos, received around 174 thousand visitors on Saturday, still far from the daily record, set on January 2nd: 188 thousand. On the other hand, Macau residents were responsible for 36.7% of entries and exits at the region’s borders, while migrant workers represented 21.6%.
According to PSP data, the The territory’s largest border, Portas do Cerco, was also the busiest, with almost 463 thousand crossings, the highest daily value in the last five yearssince the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic. In the neighboring Chinese region of Hong Kong, Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Rosanna Law Shuk-pui, predicted on Saturday that 1.43 million visitors from mainland China will pass through the city during the Lunar New Year holidays.
Chinese authorities predict that hundreds of millions of people will travel, in the world’s largest annual migration, to celebrate the Lunar Year of the Horse, a holiday period that this year falls between February 15th and 23rd. But the travel season, the so-called ‘chunyun’, a period of 40 days before and after the start of the Lunar New Year, has already started on February 2nd.
On January 29, Li Chunlin, deputy director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the country’s main economic planning body, predicted that Chinese people take up to 9.5 billion trips during ‘chunyun‘. If this forecast is correct, it would be a new historical record, far exceeding the maximum recorded in 2024: 9.02 billion trips.
According to official estimates, train trips could reach 540 million, while air trips are expected to be around 95 million, both potential historic maximums for this period. The authorities have promised that the capacity of the transport system will be reinforced on the busiest routes and in areas of greatest demand to cope with the expected increase in travel.
The ‘chunyun’ is often used as an indicator of economic activity and as a stress test for the country’s transport infrastructure, in a context in which China seeks to boost consumption and services as drivers of domestic demand, which has not yet fully recovered since the pandemic.
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