Chinese government data: mobile internet traffic during Lunar New Year holidays grew 23.4% YoY and food delivery orders grew 57% YoY, amid travel restrictions
Iris Deng / South China Morning Post :
Context & Ripple Effects
The last time Beijing published a broad internet snapshot, in its 904M-user biannual report, food delivery was the designated laggard while education and live streaming absorbed the lockdown gains. A year later the ranking has flipped: official data now shows Lunar New Year food delivery orders up 57% YoY alongside 23.4% growth in mobile internet traffic, both driven by travel restrictions that kept people at home for the holiday.
The pattern echoes what third-party trackers already saw during the first outbreak, when Trustdata logged telecommuting and online education active users jumping ~30% as home-bound routines formed. The holiday data matters because it tests whether those routines survive even China's most travel-heavy week.
First-order effects
- Delivery platforms capture holiday demand that would normally flow to restaurants, railways, and airlines — reunion dinners arrive as couriered orders instead of dining-out spend.
- With trips cancelled, households burn more mobile data at home, lifting usage for every app category that serves the couch rather than the road.
Second-order effects
- Merchants and couriers who would traditionally shut down for the holiday have an incentive to stay operational, converting a seasonal trough into a peak and raising the baseline cost of holiday labor and logistics.
- Travel, hospitality, and gifting-adjacent businesses face a displaced Lunar New Year, pushing them to chase the same consumer through digital channels rather than foot traffic.
Third-order effects
- If restrictions keep reshaping consecutive holidays, China's seasonal consumption calendar structurally rebalances toward delivered goods and in-home digital services, making official traffic and order statistics a standing proxy for how locked-down the country is.
- Sustained home-bound demand also feeds the hardware cycle the shipment data tracks — after 2021's recovery to 342.8M units, any durability of these habits becomes a demand signal for devices and connectivity rather than a temporary spike.
The trend: Pandemic-era travel restrictions are permanently re-routing Chinese holiday spending away from trips and toward home-delivered, mobile-first services.