The urbanization symbols reflected in the Spring Festival travel rush

Around the Spring Festival, the large-scale Spring Festival travel rush begins again. This scene presents the rapid transformation of "rural China" and also embodies the profound background of the country's urbanization. Understanding the urbanization symbols shown in the Spring Festival travel rush can help better understand the ultra-large-scale and rapidly growing population mobility behind economic growth.

Where lies the difficulty of the Spring Festival travel rush? At present, the "separation of people and household registration" population, meaning those who have left their street or township of residence and lived elsewhere for half a year or more, has already reached 298 million, among whom 253 million have left their district or county. Most of them are labor-force employment migrants working in jobs or business, including 168 million migrant workers employed away from home. What the Spring Festival travel rush reflects is the enormous population flow of rural-to-urban migration and urban-to-urban migration since reform and opening up, and it is the magnificent historical process of China's urbanization development. From 36.2% in 2000 to 54.77% by the end of 2014, China's urban population has reached 749 million. The urbanization force with migrant workers as the main body constitutes the main group migrating from rural areas to towns and cities.

This previously rare population mobility has not only driven the urbanization process, but also shows that migrant and floating populations are indispensable to cities. It should be noted that the recent economic downturn has to some extent limited employment demand, and returning home for the Spring Festival still has shockwave effects on the labor market's "labor shortage." Especially in some large cities and megacities, obvious labor shortages have appeared in domestic service labor markets and catering service markets, causing related service costs to rise substantially. This also shows that migrant and floating populations form an important part of the urban industrial workforce and the labor supply for the service sector. In the economic activities of many cities, the number of people without local household registration has already exceeded the local population. They are contributors, creators, and workers in China's urbanization development. Simply regarding them as the cost and burden of urbanization development is by no means seeking truth from facts, and it also ignores their value to urban growth.

In recent years, the proportion of leisure and tourism-related Spring Festival travel during long holidays has also increased. The Spring Festival travel rush is no longer just a simple transportation pattern of "returning home before the Spring Festival" and "returning to the city after the Spring Festival"; it also reflects leisure-oriented transportation demand during the holiday period toward the warmer south and tourist cities. This change in content from "going home" to "leisure" reflects changes in contemporary social lifestyles. The continuously modernizing and urbanizing Spring Festival has begun to produce new values and connotations. The Spring Festival travel rush is not only the return of "home," but also the gradual growth of modern cities and modern lifestyles. Gradually withdrawing from the rural-centered "return home-return to the city" Spring Festival travel rush model signifies the direction of modernity in the urbanization process.

Of course, the latter form of Spring Festival travel is still in a budding state, and the Spring Festival travel rush model dominated by "returning home before the festival" and "returning to the city after the festival" also reflects the situation of today's migrant and floating population. Many people have no choice but to return home for the Spring Festival because their children, spouses, or parents live in rural areas. Data show that China has more than 60 million left-behind children and more than 40 million left-behind elderly people. The divisiveness of huge family life drives "returning home" for reunion. The lack of an identity of "home" formed in the city of inflow is also an important reason for returning home during the Spring Festival. Even if they already live stably and long term in the city, the "home" in their hearts is still in their native place, so they still join the great tide of the Spring Festival travel rush without hesitation.

Urban managers should think about how to strive to strengthen migrant and floating populations' identification with life in their cities and enhance the completeness of their family life in the city. How to reduce floating populations returning home for the Spring Festival, let them celebrate the festival in the city, or enable parents and relatives to come to the city for reunion when conditions permit, and enhance migrant and floating populations' identification with life in their cities and social integration--this is a more "people-oriented" urbanization development. If, through more inclusive urbanization, urban-rural interaction can shift toward normalization, it will certainly promote national development to gradually move from a rural society toward modern urban and rural life.