Train tickets sale for 2025 Spring Festival travel rush to start on Dec 31

Train tickets for China's upcoming Spring Festival travel rush will go on sale starting from December 31, announced the China State Railway Group Co., Ltd. (China Railway) on Thursday.

The travel rush, a period of high transportation demand as people return home for family reunions, usually lasts about 40 days. This year, it will begin on January 14, according to China Railway.

To cater to the ticketing needs of students heading home, China's official railway ticket-booking app 12306 launched a new function on Thursday that allows students to make reservations ahead of the pre-sale date.

With the new function, from December 12 to February 12, 2025, students can reserve train tickets for travels between December 28 and February 28, 2025.

China's foreign trade has shown strong performance in 2024, with projections showing the country's trade surplus approaching one trillion U.S. dollars, a Chinese economist said.

China's total goods imports and exports maintained steady growth in the first 11 months of 2024, with the trade value reaching 39.79 trillion yuan (about 5.6 trillion U.S. dollars), up 4.9 percent from the same period last year, official data showed.

In each of the first three quarters of the year, China's total import and export volume exceeded 10 trillion yuan (about 1.4 trillion U.S. dollars), the first time in history.

From January to November, mechanical and electrical products made up nearly 60 percent of China's exports, with automated data processing equipment, integrated circuits, and automobiles all seeing double-digit growth.

Liu Qing, Executive Dean of the National Academy of Development and Strategic Research at Renmin University of China, said that China's foreign trade has remained highly competitive this year, despite the global political and economic instability.

"We forecast that China's trade surplus for 2024 will surpass 950 billion U.S. dollars, which is a remarkable achievement. Despite the current global political and economic turmoil, our international competitiveness remains strong, which reflects the strength of our industrial foundation and competitiveness," said Liu.