Population migration serves as a critical lens for examining regional economic development, public service levels, urban governance capabilities, and social structural transformations.
CnOpenData has constructed a comprehensive, multi-year, multi-dimensional migration indicator system covering the entire nation. The data comprises three major modules: migration inflow sources, migration outflow destinations, and intra-city mobility intensity. It not only provides aggregate trends at provincial and municipal geographic granularities but, more crucially, offers daily migration flow details between cities and between provinces, forming complete directed weighted migration matrices. Covering 31 provinces and 367 prefecture-level and above cities across China, with a temporal span from 2019 to the present, this dataset provides high-quality spatial interaction data support for regional economic analysis, urban network research, transportation planning, pandemic response evaluation, and quantitative investment strategy development.
Data Features:
- Nationwide Coverage with Granular Geographic Resolution: Covers 31 provinces and 367 prefecture-level and above cities, with migration data refined to the prefecture-level city level, supporting multi-level spatial analysis.
- Complete Spatial Interaction Network Data: The core strength lies in providing daily migration flows between cities and provinces, rather than merely aggregate indicators. Users can directly utilize detailed tables to construct directed weighted migration networks, where nodes represent cities/provinces, edges represent migration population proportions, and weights reflect flow intensity.
- Long Time Series with Multiple Version Coverage: The data spans multiple critical periods from 2019 to 2026, including typical migration cycles such as the Spring Festival, National Day holidays, pandemic lockdowns, and work resumption phases.
- High-Frequency Information Closely Aligned with Real-World Dynamics: The data offers daily frequency information, enabling real-time reflection of dynamic changes in population mobility, suitable for high-frequency economic monitoring and policy evaluation scenarios.
Data Application Value:
- Urban Network and Regional Connectivity Research: Utilizing daily inter-city migration flows, dynamic urban networks can be constructed to analyze linkage intensity within city clusters, radiation scope of central cities, and inter-provincial border effects. Supports calculation of network analysis metrics (e.g., degree centrality, betweenness centrality, community detection), revealing the spatial structure and evolutionary patterns of population mobility.
- Quantitative Investment: Constructing Regional Linkage Factors and High-Frequency Economic Indicators: Can be used to analyze the impact of population mobility on regional economic growth, housing prices, employment, consumption, and other variables. Supports cutting-edge research topics such as pandemic transmission modeling, transportation network resilience, and urban attractiveness.
- Government and Public Institutions: Supporting Urban Governance, Emergency Response, and Resource Allocation: Enables real-time monitoring of population inflows and outflows, aiding in transportation scheduling during peak periods like the Spring Festival and holidays. During pandemics, it can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of containment measures and predict healthcare resource pressure.
CnOpenData Population Migration Big Data features daily migration flows between cities and provinces as its core characteristic, constructing comprehensive spatial interaction data that fully reflects China’s population mobility patterns. Whether for regional network analysis and public policy evaluation in academic research or constructing regional linkage factors in quantitative investment, this dataset provides dynamic, granular, and traceable foundational support. We look forward to collaborating with users across sectors to uncover the economic and social values embedded in population mobility.
Version Description
Field Description
Inflow Source Information Module by Region
Outflow Destination Information Module by Region
Intra-City Mobility Intensity Information Module
Sample Data
Aggregate Trend of Inflow Source Cities
Aggregate Trend of Inflow Source Provinces
Detailed Inflow Source Cities
Detailed Inflow Source Provinces
Aggregate Trend of Outflow Destination Cities
Aggregate Trend of Outflow Destination Provinces
Detailed Outflow Destination Cities
Detailed Outflow Destination Provinces
Intra-City Mobility Intensity Information
Related Literature
- Zhang Tongbin, Wang Lei, 2024: "Policy Signals and Long-Term Settlement Intentions of Floating Populations," The World Economy, Issue 7.
Data Update Frequency
Annual Update