A Qatar Airways flight lands at Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in Guangdong province. [Photo by LI TONG/FOR CHINA DAILY]

Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in the Guangdong provincial capital surpassed Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in the United States to become the world's busiest airport of 2020.

Despite the pandemic last year, the Guangzhou airport, one of the three busiest on the Chinese mainland, handled 43.77 million passenger trips last year, around 800,000 more than the figure recorded at the Atlanta airport, according to a statement released by Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport on Monday.

Last year, with the pandemic in full swing, the Atlanta airport logged 42.92 million passenger trips, a year-on-year decline of 61.17 percent.

This is the first time a Chinese airport has led the world in passenger flow, the statement said.

As the pandemic began to be controlled on the Chinese mainland starting in April, Guangzhou Baiyun began handling more passenger trips than its Atlanta counterpart. Large industrial companies in the province, home many foreign-funded companies, joint ventures, State-owned and private firms, resumed production, the statement said.

For the month of November, Guangzhou Baiyun handled more than 5 million passenger trips, becoming the first airport to process more than 5 million passenger trips on the mainland in a single month.

The rapid growth in the passenger flow at Guangzhou Baiyun indicates a strong economic rebound in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, as the coronavirus has basically been controlled on the mainland.

Guangdong's GDP reached more than 11 trillion yuan ($1.69 trillion) in 2020.