Black Noise | There are still 900 million people in China who have never flown

The January 6th issue of Caijing magazine revealed the latest data from the Civil Aviation Administration: as of the end of 2025, 500 million people in China have flown, meaning that 900 million people have not flown.

This is why I always remind in my articles that we have only been able to eat our fill for about twenty years. We are really far from catching up with and surpassing the UK and the US, and looking down on developed countries; we are, in fact, still very far behind.

Why is the data on the number of people who have flown important? Because flying often implies two things: first, the overall quality and quantity of enterprises is very high, with frequent cross-regional activities, so there is a need for a large number of business trips; second, there are many people on medium and long-distance trips, and this kind of travel is often not for visiting relatives and work needs, but for pure tourism and vacation.

If the basic composition of the number of people who fly comes from essential needs such as work and visiting relatives, then the increase often comes from pure consumption such as tourism and vacation.

And the latter often reflects the most realistic level of per capita income in a country.

But people in developed countries usually don’t go on vacation because they have a lot of money, but because they dare to spend.

I have met ordinary earners in Europe who basically have vacation plans. Once I stayed in an Airbnb homestay, and the landlord was an Italian girl. She just rented a house and used two of the bedrooms as a homestay. Her income was not very high. I talked to her, and she had just graduated from university and had no other job.

During the chat, she suddenly said excitedly: After finishing these recent orders, I’m going to travel to California!

Compared to the income of Italians, traveling to the United States is also quite expensive. So I said, that should require a lot of money.

She said: It doesn’t matter, I have saved half a year’s income, enough for this vacation, and I can continue to earn money when I come back.

At that time, I couldn’t help but feel: They really dare to spend money!

There’s another thing. I have serious cervical problems due to writing for many years, and I often go to a physiotherapist in Spain.

This profession does not require a medical degree background, only needs to study for about a year and pass a professional certificate to be able to work. It’s quite simple, so it’s not a high-income group, just the most ordinary income level.

For two weeks, he was not there when I went to the shop, and other therapists were replaced. I thought he had resigned.

When I saw him again two weeks later, he greeted me happily and said that he had recently traveled to New Zealand.

To be honest, I still have the mentality of us Chinese who like to judge others based on their income, and I secretly thought: you are just an ordinary masseur, and you have money to travel to New Zealand for two weeks?

During the usual massage, I learned that he has at least two long-distance travel plans every year, each time for two weeks, and there are even more short-distance trips within Europe.

I still couldn’t help but sigh: Why can they live such a high-quality life even if they are ordinary people?

Later I learned that in Europe, as long as you have a decent job, it is indeed easy to live like this.

There is another mode of travel that I experienced in the swimming pool of an ordinary gym in Spain.

At that time, a middle-aged man in the next lane was swimming with his two daughters. I was wondering that I had never seen this person in the pool. He came over and struck up a conversation with me: Hello sir, are you Chinese?

I said yes. He said: I am Italian, I like Chinese culture very much, and I can speak a few words of Chinese!

I asked: Are you bringing your children to travel?

He said: Yes, we will go on vacation to another country during the children’s winter and summer vacations, and live there for two or three weeks. This time we chose Spain.

This example is consistent with my overall feeling of Europe: within Europe, travel is really a very frequent and easy thing.

The vast majority of tourists to major attractions in Europe are people from within Europe. Regardless of gender, age, rich or poor, vacation travel is a part of life, but those who are slightly richer may go to resorts in the Alps or islands, and those who are even richer will go to high-consumption countries like the United States.

This also brings prosperity to the European economy. Many people say that the European economy is not doing well, but looking at their physical economic consumption scale, it is still very scary.

So what I want to say is, why is the proportion of people who fly so high in developed countries? It is because they have enough confidence and enough time to vacation and relax.

I also have a European friend who works part-time and travels everywhere. Later I learned that there are indeed many youth subsidies in Europe that allow them to boldly venture out while they are young, and a sound social security system is also their confidence.

Enterprises usually have vacation subsidies for employees, which are issued for important public holidays every year. The time is also very sufficient. Almost the entire month of August is a national holiday, plus Christmas, Holy Week, and some festivals of each country, there are a lot of holidays.

In summary: you don’t necessarily have to be rich, but you have to have confidence; you don’t necessarily have to be idle, but you definitely don’t have unpaid overtime, and it is even less possible to encroach on weekends and public holidays.

From the old farmers in the deep mountains to the bottom workers in big cities, you can enjoy the dignity of vacation in Europe, because it is not expensive in itself, and you also have time and energy.

Saying so much is not to show: look how developed they are, and how backward we are.

In fact, I have always been proud of the development achievements that China has achieved, and I often tell the locals in Europe that we had a large population in a state of hunger in the 1970s, but now you Europeans also think that China is very strong.

But what China lacks most now is not national strength, but the “strength” of people’s lives.

By referring to this state of Europeans, it can be seen that Chinese people need more leisure consumption. This requires an overall balance of income – not necessarily how high the income becomes, but to narrow the gap between high and low earners.

A very small number of people can earn 20,000 to 30,000 yuan a month, and there are hundreds of millions of people who only earn 1,000 yuan a month. The income gap reaches an astonishing twenty or thirty times. This is unimaginable in those countries with very equal wealth distribution.

When income is balanced, prices will also automatically tend to a balanced value, and consumption such as vacations will not seem particularly extravagant.

Ultimately, it is necessary to achieve: regardless of which class of people, they have the ability, the confidence, and the time to travel and vacation long distances. This is a very healthy manifestation of social development.

Finally, I will give another example that may make everyone feel more: the proportion of Koreans traveling to Europe and the United States is far higher than that of Chinese people, especially in the past two or three years.

In addition to the high income of Koreans, their many holidays are also an important reason.

South Korea is already the ultimate example of involution, but we still have a big gap. Only by first seeing this gap can there be a possibility of gradually getting better.

But if the ideological consciousness is still limited to the imagination of “Koreans are so poor that they can’t even afford beef”, and even in the case of 900 million people who have not flown, they still laugh at Europe and the United States, then I think this gap may never be narrowed.