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Although a full recovery in travel is probably going to take longer, China’s long-awaited border reopening, the last phase in the demolition of Covid Zero, is expected to prompt a flood of people returning home.
China no longer requires quarantine for arrivals as of this Sunday after authorities dropped the rule that, combined with the high cost of plane travel under severe capacity limitations, was a significant disincentive for tourists. The significant easing of border controls just two weeks before the Lunar New Year holiday signals an end to Beijing’s efforts to keep out a virus that has come to be recognised as endemic throughout the world, even though anyone wishing to enter the country will still need a 48-hour negative Covid test result.
Many Chinese who have been living abroad for years are returning home in large numbers as the immediate effect.
Connor Zhao, a 25-year-old consultant from San Francisco, said, “I haven’t been home in almost two years, so the announcement felt like a fever dream.” He is currently on vacation in Bangkok and will travel to Qingdao on January 19 with a stopover in Hong Kong, which has more flights into the mainland accessible.
“Seeing my folks makes me very happy. To be able to celebrate the Chinese New Year with them means a lot to me “he stated.
But it’s unlikely that the increase in travellers entering the nation will be matched by an increase in demand for international travel. It will take months or maybe years for the flow of Chinese tourists, who used to spend $280 billion annually in tourist hotspots from Paris to Tokyo, to return to its pre-pandemic levels.
Airlines have been reluctant to instantly make significant modifications to their flight schedule, so capacity is still limited and costs are high. A number of countries have put testing requirements on travellers from China as a result of an increase in infections.
According to Chen Xin, head of China leisure and transport research at UBS Securities, “the propensity to travel has started to firmly rebound among Chinese.” The outgoing travel routes, however, still take some time to change.
The reopening of China’s borders signifies the end of Covid Zero, a policy that isolated the second-largest economy in the world for three years and had a negative impact on the economy. While the precautions were successful in containing the virus for a significant portion of the pandemic while it killed millions elsewhere, they lost significance when more contagious versions of the coronavirus emerged, making its eradication all but impossible.
The pace of change quickened after China abruptly abandoned domestic Covid control measures like mass testing and lockdowns in the final months of 2022. Quarantine, which was arbitrarily extended by local authorities in some parts of China to almost a month at some points during the pandemic, was rolled back by the government in June last year.
More than a year after early Covid Zero supporters including Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand resumed international travel without quarantines, it is the last nation to abolish border restrictions.
Since there aren’t many direct flights from international locations to mainland cities, the majority of the initial inbound traffic is anticipated to arrive from Hong Kong. There has been a rush to reserve slots in the daily quota of around 60,000 individuals allowed to travel north from the financial centre, including 50,000 via the land borders that separate the two regions. Officials have pledged, though, that capacity will be increased over time.
The requirement for a negative PCR test and practises like nearly universal mask wearing may serve as a barrier in the short run with regard to the resumed visitation by foreigners and businesspeople to China. But China has re-joined the rest of the globe for the first time since the virus first appeared there in late 2019 in Wuhan.
