Migrant cities seen to reap economic benefits as workers put off Lunar New Year home travel plans amid pandemic. Zhou Mo reports from Shenzhen.

It’s considered an enormous sacrifice for a worker on the Chinese mainland to give up joining in the annual Spring Festival travel rush back to their hometowns to be with their families for the biggest traditional festival on the Chinese calendar.

Lu Xin, who works for a semiconductor company in Shenzhen, did just that. After days of dithering, the 29-year-old decided not to return to Ganzhou in southeastern Jiangxi province and sought a refund for the high-speed train ticket she had bought for the journey on Feb 9. This year’s Spring Festival, which ushers in the Year of the Ox, starts on Feb 12.

It’s the first time she won’t be spending the festival with her family since she began working in Shenzhen six years ago.

“It’s better not to leave and be on the safe side,” said Lu, explaining that her chief concern is that she might not be able to return to work on time in case of a city lockdown as seen in Wuhan, Hubei province last year after the coronavirus pandemic broke out. 

Lu is among millions of migrant mainland workers who, by Chinese tradition, would return to their hometowns for the all-important family reunion dinner on Lunar New Year’s eve. However, amid a winter resurgence of the pandemic, central and local governments have urged people to stay put to reduce the possibility of infections caused by mass population movements, and many people have to put their plans on hold this year.

The Ministry of Transport has forecast 1.7 billion passenger trips will be made during this year’s Spring Festival travel season — up more than 10 percent from the same period in 2020 — but still 40 percent lower than that of pre-COVID 2019.

The change is expected to have a big impact on economic production and consumption across the country, especially in Guangdong province, which has the largest migrant population nationwide.

To benefit production

According to a report by Haitong Securities, the decrease in the number of workers going home for Spring Festival will significantly boost economic production as businesses can resume operations quicker than usual.

Under such circumstances, the added value of industrial output in the first two months of 2021 is projected to grow by more than 40 percent over the same period a year ago, the report said.

Hoekiet Chong, general manager of Flex Power System (Dongguan), said over 70 percent of the company’s employees are expected to forego their home travel plans this year — up 50 percent from previous years.

The Dongguan-based manufacturing plant of US electronics manufacturer Flex International, which has more than 5,500 workers, mainly produces electronics items.

“The stay-put policy will allow us to achieve the highest quarterly revenue this year compared with the same quarter in previous years, generating more than 30 percent additional revenue,” said Chong.

“It will also help boost local consumer industries with more people celebrating the festive season in Dongguan.”

Flex Zhuhai campus, with more than 14,000 employees, expects its production capacity to grow by about 20 percent year-on-year during the festive holidays, with a projected 30 percent increase in manpower.

For many other businesses, however, it’s a different story.

“We’re struggling with more factory workers departing these days,” said Lu Bin, president of Brothersbox Industrial, a Dongguan-based company specializing in manufacturing packaging, stationery products and game-class toys.

After the central government unveiled measures to reduce the flow of people during the Chinese New Year holidays, factory workers had chosen to leave for their hometowns at a faster pace fearing they would be required to present negative COVID-19 test reports and be subject to 14-day quarantine if they left after Jan 28 when the travel rush began, Lu said.

“We’ve taken various measures to make them stay. For example, we asked medical workers to come to the factory to conduct COVID-19 tests; we told our workers the company would pay for their tests. We also paid their January wages in advance, but many still left. We now have less than one-third of front-line workers at hand,” he said.

As a result, Lu had to allocate the company’s office staff to the assembly lines to help with the production work.

“Luckily, some of our overseas clients have postponed delivery of their orders due to soaring shipping costs. This gives us time to think of solutions,” he said.

Local governments in Guangdong province have rolled out incentives to induce workers to stay put during the upcoming holidays. The incentives include giving away red packets, free tickets to places of entertainment and offering technical training subsidies.

To boost consumption

The usual scenes of empty streets and vacant homes in key migrant cities during the Spring Festival are expected to change this year. Restaurants, supermarkets and hotels are upbeat about their business during the weeklong holidays, saying the increase in the number of people staying behind will help boost local consumption.

“In previous years, our business during the Chinese New Year period was relatively bleak as a large number of consumers would have left Shenzhen. But this year, we expect our business to grow by more than 20 percent compared with the previous average,” said Liu Hanqing, who runs a hotpot restaurant in the city’s Nanshan district. The restaurant, like many others, for the first time launched takeout dinners for Lunar New Year’s Eve to cater to the changing consumption environment.

In Guangzhou, nearly 30 percent of restaurants plan to offer takeout dinners for Lunar New Year’s Eve, according to a local media report. Over 30 percent of local catering enterprises said they will remain open during the holidays.

Zhang Yi, chief executive of consultancy iiMedia Research, said, however, the reduced population movement will have a limited impact on the mainland’s overall consumer market.

“According to our recent survey, nearly 80 percent of respondents said they would like to consume during the Chinese New Year holidays wherever they are. Therefore, a major change we expect to see is that part of the previous consumption in the smaller cities or rural areas will be transferred to the major cities this year,” he said.

Tourist sites and hotels in and around major cities like Guangzhou and Shenzhen will see more visitors as two-day trips will become a popular choice for those staying behind, he added.

Contact the writer at sally@chinadailyhk.com