China’s National Immigration Administration (NIA) has released its final head-count for this year’s National Day “golden week” (1–7 October). A total of 15.46 million inbound and outbound movements were recorded at the country’s land, air and sea checkpoints, averaging 2.21 million crossings per day. The flow was 6.7 percent higher than the same holiday last year and peaked on 4 October, when 2.397 million travellers cleared immigration. Breaking the numbers down, 4.444 million mainland residents travelled abroad, up 9.3 percent year-on-year. Inbound foreign nationals totalled 682,000, while visa-free travellers alone reached 505,000—evidence that Beijing’s fast-expanding unilateral and reciprocal visa-waiver deals are stimulating demand. Immigration officers also inspected 732,000 means of transport (planes, vessels, trains and vehicles), 14.7 percent more than in 2025. To keep queues manageable, the NIA said it issued real-time peak alerts, opened additional e-channels and redeployed staff from quieter crossings to the busiest gateways such as Beijing Capital, Shanghai Pudong, Guangzhou Baiyun and the major Shenzhen/Hong Kong land links. The agency urged international passengers to use off-peak time-slots and make full use of mobile pre-arrival declaration tools that cut paperwork at the border. For corporate mobility managers the figures confirm that China’s international travel rebound is gathering momentum and that staffing levels at ports of entry are broadly keeping pace. Employers moving talent in and out of China during peak seasons should nevertheless advise travellers to arrive early, complete the electronic arrival card in advance and carry printed hotel bookings and return/onward tickets in case of spot checks. Looking ahead, the next major stress-test will be the Lunar New Year rush in February 2027, when both inbound family-reunion traffic and outbound leisure travel traditionally surge. The NIA says it will continue to refine risk-profiling and automated clearance algorithms to raise throughput without compromising security.
Source: Xinhua
