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World's Largest Migration Tracked by Chinese Search Engine Baidu

The world’s largest human migration— equivalent to almost every American travelling 10 times over — is being captured graphically for the first time.
Mass migration in China
Image: Mass migration in China can be seen in a graphic provided by China's Baidu search engine.qianxi.baidu.com

BEIJING — The largest human migration in history — equivalent to almost every American travelling 10 times over — is being captured graphically for the first time, according to China's leading search engine.

The country’s transport network expected to record more than 2.8 billion trips over a 40-day Chinese New Year holiday period. Travel volume is expected to peak Monday.

The movement of people throughout the country during “Chunyun,” or Spring Festival Season, is being recorded by location-based data from search engine Baidu’s mobile software products that track travelers. The country operates the largest mobile mapping platform in China, with 350 million active users, he said.

“We receive 10 billion positioning requests every day, which allow us to monitor when and where travelers go,” Baidu spokesman Kaiser Kuo told NBC News. “Baidu is the first to make this map publicly available."

China has a population of around 1.4 billion, many of whom are expected to make several trips to celebrate the Year of the Goat, which starts on Thursday.

Mass migration in China
Image: Mass migration in China can be seen in a graphic provided by China's Baidu search engine.qianxi.baidu.com

IN-DEPTH

— Eric Baculinao