China Eases Travel Rules: No COVID-19 Tests Required for Incoming Visitors

Beginning on Wednesday, inbound passengers to China will no longer be required to provide a negative COVID-19 test result, marking a significant step in the country’s reopening to the outside world following a three-year isolation that started with the country’s borders closing in March 2020.

At a conference in Beijing on Monday, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, disclosed the modification.

China eliminated the need for foreign nationals to undergo quarantine in January, and over the previous few months has progressively extended the number of international flights as well as the list of nations to which Chinese residents are permitted to visit.

Beijing just reversed its strict domestic “zero COVID” policy in December, following years of harsh restrictions that occasionally included whole city lockdowns and protracted quarantines for afflicted individuals.

The limits caused the second-largest economy in the world to contract, which increased unemployment and occasionally sparked unrest.

Arriving travelers had to isolate for many weeks in hotels that the government had chosen. To stop the virus from spreading, several residents were physically imprisoned inside their homes.

The COVID limits sparked protests in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Nanjing in November, posing the Communist Party’s biggest overt challenge to its control since the Tiananmen demonstrations of 1989.

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Rapid COVID Safeguard Removal Spurs Crisis

Authorities quickly removed the majority of COVID safeguards at the beginning of December, causing a wave of infections that overflowed hospitals and cemeteries.

According to a recent study supported by the U.S. federal government, the quick abandonment of the “zero COVID” policy may have caused an extra 2 million fatalities in the two months that followed.

Official estimates of 60,000 deaths within a month of the limits being lifted are substantially exceeded by this number.

Local government occasionally enacted snap lockdowns during the “zero COVID” era in an effort to contain infections, confining individuals inside of offices and residential buildings.

In one of the largest pandemic-related mass lockdowns in history, Shanghai’s 25 million citizens were kept in their homes from April to June of last year.

People had to rely on government food supplies, which were frequently criticized as being inadequate, and they had to submit to periodic PCR tests.

Beijing emphasized China’s “zero COVID” policy and the initial, low number of illnesses throughout the pandemic as proof that its political system is superior to Western democracies.

The government has had to deal with a sluggish economic recovery since removing the COVID limits.

Some international businesses have scaled back their investments in China as a result of the limitations and tensions over diplomatic relations with the United States and other Western democracies.

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Source: ABC News