More Than Half of Residents Moved to Nearby Cities Before Wuhan Lockdown... 6,430 Headed to Korea

Analysis Results of China Yijiaocaijing Network and Baidu Big Data

[Image source=Yonhap News]

As 5 million residents reportedly left the city of Wuhan (武漢), China, where pneumonia caused by the novel coronavirus broke out, big data analysis regarding their whereabouts has drawn attention. The majority moved to other major cities in China, and a significant number of air travelers were found to have gone overseas to countries such as South Korea.

China's Yicai Global and Baidu (百度) analyzed the movement of Baidu Map app users in the Wuhan area from January 10 to 22, before Wuhan was locked down, and announced the results on the 27th. The Baidu Map app is used by approximately 644 million people, nearly half of the Chinese population. This period allows for an approximate tracking of the movement trends of Wuhan residents.

According to the analysis, 60-70% of users departing from Wuhan moved to other cities within Hubei Province near Wuhan. The rest traveled to places such as Henan (河南), Hunan (湖南), Anhui (安徽), Chongqing (重慶), Jiangxi (江西), Guangdong (廣東), Beijing (北京), and Shanghai (上海).

[Image source=Yonhap News]

Yicai Global analyzed data from the Chinese airline service app 'Hangban Guan Jia (港班管家)' and found that the top ten destination cities for passengers departing Wuhan were all major Chinese cities. Between December 30 and January 22, 65,853 passengers traveled from Wuhan to Beijing. The next most popular destinations were Shanghai (57,814) and Guangzhou (55,922). Following these were Chengdu (54,539), Haikou (48,567), Kunming (44,751), Xiamen (39,641), Shenzhen (38,065), Sanya (31,213), and Nanning (29,496).

During the same period, the most visited overseas destination for Wuhan passengers was Thailand (20,558). Singapore had 10,680 visitors, Tokyo had 9,080, and South Korea had 6,430, respectively.