Passengers line up to check in at Liuji Airport in Xiangyang City, central China's Hubei Province, March 29, 2020. Domestic passenger flights resumed operations in Hubei Province except in the Wuhan Tianhe International Airport. (Xinhua/Xie Jianfei)

Airborne passengers undertaken by China's civil aviation system have recovered to 98 percent of previous years' level in the third quarter of this year, showing the country's rapid economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Ministry of Transport.  

Meanwhile, passengers taking the country's high-speed trains have recovered 80 percent at the end of the third quarter, the ministry said.

The freight volume has returned to normal levels too. 

Freight volume came to 32.78 billion tons in the first three quarters, a decrease of 3.3 percent, 4.5 percentage points lower than the decline recorded in the first half year. 

The postal express industry completed 56.14 billion pieces of business in the first three quarters, a year-on-year increase of 27.9 percent; the total number of China-Europe express trains reached 8,756, a year-on-year increase of 46 percent; and the number of containers in the railways and waterways sector hit 5.03 million, or a year-on-year increase of 28.4 percent. 

The country's port handling capacity grew by 3 percent to reach 10.61 billion tons in the first nine months. 

Foreign trade cargo throughput increased by 4.2 percent from a year earlier.  "Because China has effectively put the COVID-19 pandemic under control, exports shot up, bolstered by orders from neighboring countries and regions, and Western countries for China-made Christmas goods," a research fellow from the Ministry of Transport told the Global Times on Wednesday, adding that China's import demand for new infrastructure also led to the boom.

In the first three quarters, China's fixed-asset investment in the transport sector grew by 9.8 percent to reach 2.51 trillion yuan ($374.02 billion).