While the public holiday is officially only seven days long, and the festival formally culminates on day 15, with an event known as the Lantern Festival, most Chinese take the majority (if not all) of their annual holiday over this time, often as block leaves. This means that people can be off work from two weeks before the start of the event, and return weeks after it has ended. The country, and practically all of its industries, can shut down for three, possibly even four weeks overall.

The holiday spreads far outside mainland China, and its effects are notable in other countries with large Chinese populations, including Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and the Philippines.

Chunyun: the world’s largest human migration

With people in China willing to search the length and breadth of the country for work, or even further afield by going abroad, Chinese New Year sparks the most gargantuan mass migration of people each year, as the vast majority of the country’s 1.4 billion strong population return home to reunite with their families.

That is just under a fifth of the world’s population travelling inside and outside China during chunyun – a 40-day period beginning 15 days before the start of the lunar year and ending 25 days after.

In 2019, almost three billion trips were completed during Chinese New Year, and there really isn’t any other event that comes close to rivalling this figure. Americans complete about 46 million trips over the Thanksgiving holiday each year, while the annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca attracts about two million Muslims each year.

While virtually all of China’s economy grinds to a halt, the few industries that go into overdrive in this period are transport, tourism, and retail. In the seven days from the start of the festival in 2017, the retail and catering industries in China saw an 11% rise in revenue from the prior year to 840 billion Chinese yen ($140 billion) – with marked lifts in sales for the leisure and entertainment sectors, and in sales of products like home appliances, digital products and jewellery.

Transport inside of China reaches its limits. It is estimated that in 2019, 408 million railway passenger trips had been made over the new year period and 73 million by air. Most of the 3 billion trips are however completed by car, translating to busy traffic situations across major city connectors.

The 2020 Chinese New Year festival is expected to see an uptick of 8% for both railway and flight trips in China, though this was before the latest SARS-like coronavirus hit the country in a significant manner. The city of Wuhan, a central transportation hub, saw lockdown whereby public transport and flights grinded to a halt, changing the typical economic patterns around the Chinese New Year period.

When are the markets closed?

Customarily, the eve of the Chinese New Year marks the reunion dinner night when families come together across distances to spend time together. This also means that depending on when it falls between the January and February period, the day often see to partial or full market closure across Chinese populated markets.

For 2020, the eve Chinese New Year had fallen upon Friday, January 24. Below outline the dates for the various market closures in relation to Chinese New Year. Do note that China and Taiwan markets closures extend beyond the key dates below for Chinese New Year.