China’s New Year Travel Rush in Full Swing – So Why Are High-Speed Trains Empty?

The Quietest Chinese New Year in History! High-Speed Trains Nearly Empty. (Screenshot from video)

[People News] As the 2025 Lunar New Year approaches, some predict that this year will mark the beginning of a major economic downturn in mainland China. Various signs in society seem to support and illustrate this claim—one striking example is the stark contrast between the anticipated travel rush and the unusually empty high-speed train carriages.

Recently, both domestic and international media have reported on the ongoing Spring Festival travel season ("Chunyun") in China. However, something unusual is happening. Some Chinese media outlets describe highway conditions as "blindingly chaotic." For instance, on the Shanghai-Kunming Expressway, drivers reported being stuck in traffic for more than five hours. But the railway situation is even stranger. By the seventh day of the Spring Festival travel season, a staggering 214 million train tickets had reportedly been sold. Yet, passengers have noticed a stark contrast: traditional "green-skin" trains (older, slower trains) are packed to capacity, while high-speed train carriages remain eerily empty, with many vacant seats. One passenger on a green-skin train lamented, "I haven't been able to go to the bathroom for three hours because it's so crowded!" Meanwhile, another traveler on a high-speed train marveled, "I’m the only one in my carriage." This stark contrast has led netizens to coin a poetic phrase: Can’t squeeze onto the green-skin train, but the high-speed train is empty.

Despite China's large population and the annual tradition of returning home for the New Year, many travelers are choosing to endure traffic jams or crowd into slow trains rather than spend money on high-speed rail tickets. This suggests that in China today, having work does not necessarily mean earning a good income—and for most people, making ends meet remains a struggle.

According to official data, the average disposable income in China for 2024 is only 41,314 yuan. Of this, 56.5% of people earn an average “wage income” of just 23,327 yuan. Meanwhile, their “consumer spending” is even higher, at 28,227 yuan. This means that more than half of Chinese citizens cannot survive on their wages alone.

In fact, as early as 2021, research in China showed that 964 million people earned less than 2,000 yuan per month. In 2023, a professor from a prestigious university stated that 280 million people had an annual income of less than 8,400 yuan. According to a former Chinese premier’s statement that “600 million people earn only 1,000 yuan per month”, a research group at a well-known Chinese university calculated in 2020 that there were indeed 600 million people earning below 1,090 yuan. A 2021 report from China International Capital Corporation (CICC) confirmed the same findings and also revealed that only 5% of the population had a monthly salary exceeding 5,000 yuan.

Clearly, ordinary Chinese citizens truly cannot afford high-speed rail! This is not an exaggeration—it is evident from the financial data on China’s high-speed rail system. According to a Chinese media report, "the construction cost of high-speed rail is too high", and it relies "primarily on debt financing." Due to "years of financial losses", China Railway Group (formerly the Ministry of Railways) now has a total debt of 6.13 trillion yuan. Among all high-speed rail lines, only six routes—Beijing-Shanghai, Shanghai-Nanjing, Nanjing-Hangzhou, Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong, Shanghai-Hangzhou, and Beijing-Tianjin—are profitable, while all others are operating at a loss. Although the high-speed rail system only recently turned a profit in 2023, it generated a net income of 11.546 billion yuan that year. Even for the most profitable Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway, it would take 20 years to recover the initial investment of 220.9 billion yuan.

Strangely, despite suffering daily financial losses, high-speed rail construction continues unabated. Over the past decade, China has rapidly expanded its high-speed rail network, ensuring that every county is connected to high-speed rail. This reckless infrastructure expansion has earned the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the infamous reputation of being a “construction maniac.” The aftermath of this frenzied development is evident in China’s abandoned “ghost cities,” “ghost towns,” vacant office buildings, and long-idle “ghost high-speed rail stations.”

A Chinese media report revealed that "idle high-speed rail stations are everywhere", and at least 26 high-speed rail stations have been abandoned after construction—some never even opened, while others closed within a few years. The report pointed out that "building a high-speed rail station costs anywhere from tens of millions to over a billion yuan, and all this money is now wasted." But who foots the bill? Not the officials who approved the projects, but rather the ordinary Chinese citizens.

Like high-speed rail lines, most high-speed rail stations are built through debt financing, with loans secured from banks and other official financial institutions. These loans ultimately come from the people’s money and deplete the hard-earned savings of Chinese citizens. A media outlet calculated that as of September 2021, China Railway Group’s total debt had reached 5.84 trillion yuan, meaning that on average, every Chinese citizen was burdened with over 4,000 yuan in debt—even if they never use high-speed rail.

This means that people who never ride high-speed rail are still forced to bear the debt, while those who actually buy tickets end up paying even more. In May 2023, fares on four major high-speed rail lines increased by 20% for first- and second-class seats, and by nearly 40% for business-class seats. Why were these four lines specifically targeted for fare hikes? Because they were performing well financially, had consistently high demand, and were crowded with passengers. The reasoning was that "ticket prices should be raised so that the wealthy can subsidize the poor." But isn’t the government, which recklessly wasted public money on unnecessary high-speed rail projects, the real "poor" entity here? And are working-class commuters, who can barely afford high-speed rail tickets out of necessity, now being labeled "the wealthy"? This clearly reflects the CCP and its state-owned enterprises engaging in “precision exploitation.” In fact, the so-called "wealthy" being squeezed include millions of migrant workers from Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi. As one commentator predicted, these not-so-rich workers would "have to bear another significant financial burden for travel during the New Year" and would "have no choice but to take the cheaper green-skin trains." And just six months later, this prediction has become reality.

Today, ordinary Chinese people are "voting with their wallets" and using nonviolent noncooperation to send a clear message to the railway companies and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): “We oppose high-speed rail fare hikes because our incomes are too low—we simply cannot afford it.” However, in its effort to trick as many passengers as possible, China’s railway company has resorted to various deceptive tactics.

Passengers have reported that “when buying tickets, they are told they must wait for availability, yet once on board, the train is nearly empty.” Others have said, “When purchasing tickets, very few first-class and second-class seats are available, but after boarding, I find I am the only person in the entire carriage.” Netizens have also pointed out that this is not a new phenomenon—it happens year-round, not just during the New Year travel season. Many say that before boarding, “tickets are unavailable,” but after getting on the train, “the carriages are mostly empty.” A railway system employee recently revealed to overseas media that this is part of a "hunger marketing" strategy used to artificially inflate demand. Additionally, "some within the railway system fabricate data to deceive higher authorities."

China’s state-owned enterprises and government agencies have long been plagued by a "cater-to-the-leadership" culture, where fraud is encouraged because it serves the interests of those in power. Companies fake demand to secure more funding. Banks are tricked into issuing massive loans. Without creating an illusion of high demand and a booming "blue ocean" market, how else could they achieve their goals? They claim that building high-speed rail "creates jobs," but have the migrant laborers who do the actual hard work received their wages? After layers of corruption siphon off funds, is there anything left to pay the workers? Clearly, political elites and their cronies are fixated on investment and loans that they can profit from without any effort—and never have to repay. Whether people actually use high-speed rail or whether it is profitable is irrelevant to them.

The so-called "high-tech, cutting-edge" infrastructure in China exists purely for show, designed to impress foreign investors, not to benefit ordinary citizens. Meanwhile, the real purpose of China’s mass surveillance system is to monitor and control innocent people. Every move a person makes on their phone is tracked by the government, and the price of any small convenience is complete surrender of personal privacy. People are even restricted from riding bicycles at night ("night cycling" bans)—so how can they possibly have the freedom to take high-speed rail whenever they please? If Chinese citizens were ever allowed to stand tall with dignity, who would the CCP have left to enslave? The CCP’s ultimate plan has never changed—it will never allow the Chinese people to live like human beings.