The world’s largest annual human migration has brought hundreds of millions of Chinese back to their hometowns for the Lunar New Year celebrations.
But in a sign of China’s role as the world’s largest auto market — with 18.9m cars sold last year against the second-ranked US’s 16.5m — an increasing number of migrants are driving home for their most important dinner of the year.
This is in spite of improvements to China’s network of high speed trains that have shrunk what used to be several days’ journey into a few hours ride — and the fact that centrally planned prices mean the falling cost of oil has not fed through to China’s petrol stations.