China wants to open its borders to tourists from this Wednesday. To this end, Chinese visa offices would resume issuing “all common visas for foreigners”, the Foreign Ministry in Beijing announced on Tuesday. Entry with visas that were issued before March 28, 2020 and are still valid, the validity of which had been suspended due to the Covid measures, should also be possible again. This serves to “further facilitate the exchange of Chinese and foreign personnel,” according to the website of the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
In addition, visa-free entry for foreigners from Hong Kong and Macau before the pandemic should be possible again. It was not initially known whether a corona test or proof of vaccination would be required for entry. Since the beginning of January, travelers to China no longer have to undergo quarantine upon arrival and only have to show an antigen test for the flight.
China is one of the last major countries to reopen its borders to tourists after the pandemic. In February, the state leadership declared its “great and decisive victory” over the virus. Head of state Xi Jinping had declared his corona policy a “miracle in human history”.
Tourism for ambitious growth targets
Tuesday’s announcement follows the close of the People’s Congress. There, Li Qiang, who was appointed prime minister on Saturday, said that the economic growth target of five percent was “not an easy task”. Apparently, the tourism sector should now start again. In this regard, Li stressed that China and the United States should work together and praised his contacts with American entrepreneurs in Shanghai.
Only at the end of last year did China lift its draconian corona measures with lockdowns, week-long quarantine requirements and constant mass tests in a step that was hardly planned in advance and also came as a surprise to the hospitals. According to experts, this had led to presumably several million Covid infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths over the turn of the year.
The official Chinese figures are far lower, at around 90,000 dead. Xi had hailed the death rate related to Covid as “at the lowest level in the world”. From the Chinese point of view, years of zero-Covid policy have given the country time to wait for a less deadly type of virus and only then open.
