Those are perfectly logical thoughts I’m just not convinced that we live in a logical world right now. And I think China may capitalize on that and isolate itself and economically dominate for a bit. Do they really need foreigners flying in and out in the short term? I really don’t know. My company saw the writing on the wall and offered us these expat gigs knowing that international travel with China was going to be a problem for a long time.

Docs list for visa applications https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/lYaTswuYYCTXCJO09EGR3Q

I think they will start to relax the rules within the next several months. During its strictest implementation, not only were people stuck in hotel rooms, but they weren't even allowed to order food from outside vendors. My own quarantine (over a year ago) was actually pretty chill. I wasn't allowed to go to work, but could otherwise roam freely.

Really? It seems to have evolved. When I did quarantine in Shanghai in October I couldn’t order food, but the only testing after the airport was a throat swab on the 12th or 13th day. Which frankly is not exactly a foolproof process.

Now the quarantine I’m currently in has an airport nasal swab, airport throat swab, and 4 different nasal swabs throughout quarantine. They also come take your temp for you instead of reporting it via wechat twice a day.

They do allow food ordering now but that was more of a logistics thing than a safety thing I bet.

If quarantine drops to 7 days or less that would be great but I don’t know if that’s really rooted in a scientific reason.

Could you elaborate why it is easier for Person A to get a visa? From the embassy announcement, it points to Chinese vaccine is required.

I was able to do my entire 14 days "at home", but the reality of "at home" was that I could go anywhere except for my office and buildings/malls that checked health codes (not many).

The next iteration of the policy was 7 days in a designated hotel ROOM with food delivered outside your door...followed by 7 days at home (with almost no monitoring).

Then, it was 14 days in a hotel room followed by 7 days at home.

Most of my friends who did the hotel drill loaded up on food at Costco (or similar) before they came back, and told me it wasn't that bad.

I'm hopeful that China will either send doctors to hotels to provide vaccines or permit foreign vaccines within the next several months. We'll just have to wait and see, but I think the powers that be know that the hotel drill isn't well regarded, and I believe they do care about our happiness to some extent.

It's very slightly easier (as of this announcement, assuming Person A wants to get a [second] Chinese vaccine) to apply for a visa now.
Prior to this announcement, the process is quite complicated with PU letters and a lot of extra steps.

In either case one is still at the discretion of the embassy whether they will actually give it to you.
And if Person A doesn't want to get a Chinese vaccine this announcement doesn't mean anything to them.

Thats interesting that it started out more relaxed, I didn’t know that. Wouldn’t have expected that.

If China does change quarantine policy for vaccinated foreigners, ill be scrambling for it. That would be a cherished moment. Til then I’ll wait it out.

I've noticed in China when a new rule is made, it'll only progressively get stricter and stricter, ill-regard to what's happening. Despite China's "success" in fighting COVID the rules around the nation is stricter, not easier. My friend in Chengdu told me that the new leadership decided to make stricter rules for Szechuan that made traveling in-and-out a bear.

I believe the local officials get punished if they have an outbreak in their neighborhood, district, city, or province. The incentive for them is to be very careful less they lose the golden ticket job and their kids lose access to their lambos and Ferraris. The change can only come from top down and with the economy humming despite the border being closed, I just don’t see them opening up anytime soon.

China isn't alone in tightening inbound quarantine measures. Australia and NZ both went through a similar process after closing their borders back in March 2020. As to tougher local policies, this is highly dependent on where you are.

True. NZ is even banning citizens from returning (after 17 positives out of 23 came from India) from India which is a step further than China Entry policy. Not the direction I am happy to see countries going.

The new variants are terrifying. I don't blame countries that have this under control from tightening rules further. Canada was doing fine until suddenly they weren't.

US and all other countries should simply reciprocate: no entry by Chinese citizens who don't have a visa issued after March 28, 2020. Only Chinese citizens with lawful permanent resident status OR a visa issued after March 28, 2020 allowed to enter the other country at all. If applying for a new visa, Chinese citizens required to be vaccinated with a US (or whatever relevant country we're talking about) approved vaccine before applying for new visa, etc.

Given the showcase importance of the Olympics, does FT believe that China will open up before Feb 2020?

Typo?

Oh please, there nothing terrifying about any of it at this point.

That’s disappointing but not surprising. World leaders are doing their best to keep the shenanigans rolling.

This sounds like the type of battle that everyone loses.

China may not have gone as far as blocking a whole country but it does have a similar policy in place, the so-called circuit-breaker on flights with excessive positive cases which has recently been applied to the China Eastern route of JFK/PVG.

Only thing you can really do is make sure that you're not the one who threw the first grenade.

define "grenade" first :p

Indeed. Chinese tourists are a valued source of demand and major revenue stream for external tourist-dependent economies. If it tourism demand (and spending) is kept within domestic borders the tourist-dependent economies (such as the 5 Eyes alliance) will be screaming that China is being protectionist.

I've been researching flights from Shanghai to the US for May and June. The prices are no longer insane, but the routings are (e.g. PVG-ICN-SEA-BOS...41 hours total). PVG-CDG-BOS is actually the best I've found...I will try to book this one way with DL miles, and hope that US-China flights are back on the schedule when I come back.

ETA: For those of you without China IDs, now is a good time to invest in residence permits. Just pay an agent around $600 (many can hook up with a "job"), jump through the hoops, and ask a friend to allow you to use his/her residence for documentation purposes. You still might be required to stay in a (very cheap) designated hotel during your quarantine, but maybe not for 14 days. Apart from RPs being awesome, I know a number of people on M visas who have been booted recently; those cameras are everywhere.

Border policies that have nothing to do with science and data, like accepting Chinese vaccines (Sinovac/Sinopharm) but not Pfizer/Moderna/J&J. A lot of the data I've seen says that the Sinovac one may be the worst of the above.

Huh? What do you mean by "booted"? Did they violate quarantine?

No. They are actually working here on L or M visas. This is no longer allowed, though M is better than L (i.e. buys you around 3 months).

Working on tourist or business visas was never allowed. In the past this was loosely enforced, now they kick people out who do it. Fair enough IMHO.

If you worked for McKinsey in SF and had a project in BJ, business visas were definitely allowed 10 years ago, and might still be now. The current crackdown I've witnessed focuses on domestic helpers from SE Asia. Basically, they spend a week in "detention" and then get booted. To me, this is shameful because all of their bosses are MDs at F500 companies, and could actually hire them legally if they put up $600. Instead, they tell them to lay low.

yeah meant

given Beijing Winter Olympics are scheduled for Feb 2022, does FT believe that China will open up borders prior to Feb 2022

which is more important, Olympics or Stability? Unless context tracking can be done efficiently for 1.4 billion people or China can import enough vaccine (SinoVac only has effacacy of 50%) I would say very unlikely

Do you categorize Trump's ban on Chinese traveler into U.S. directly from China last March as based on scientific data or not then?

The consultant is traveling in and out and is not working full time in China, it’s a short term assignment. A business visa is appropriate for that type of work. If they got transferred to the Beijing office of McK then they’d need a work permit and residence permit. The domestic helpers are obviously working full time in China and domiciled here. According to the rules they need a WP and RP as well. I agree that it’s a shame they are cracking down but it’s technically illegal to work full time in China on anything other than a work permit backed RP.

I'd categorize that as doing the right thing for the wrong reason. And that lack of any sort of mandatory quarantines on US citizens flying the same routes Chinese citizens were banned from taking made it effectively useless (if it was doing the right thing for the right reason, it would have been followed up with mandatory quarantines).

Agreed, especially given China's public admission that their existing vaccines aren't very good. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/11/w...d-vaccine.html

I suspect the follow-up will be "we need to keep the border controls and mandatory quarantines in place until our improved vaccines are ready in ~late 2022."

I think they'll make the call after the Tokyo Olympics. There is always the option of holding it with no overseas visitors. Quarantining just the athletes should be no problem, as the Australians successfully demonstrated with the Australian Open.

It didn't matter in the end though, as all the lineages from China direct died out. Only the one that came via Europe survives today.

I wouldn't even say it was the right thing. The right thing would have been to quarantine arrivals. (Not that it would have made much difference, the horse had long since left the barn.)

the language of the ban does not refer to Chinese nationality at all (or any specific nationality, really, other than that of the United States)
I am not commenting on the remainder of the question, as others here have done so

That's pretty much how it works with most viruses. We don't have 50 different influenza strains circulating from the last 50 seasons. A few strains typically become dominant, others die out, and new ones evolve from the dominant ones.

Well the right thing would have been for the US CDC to have not botched the test kits and to have started producing them as early as December, so that all of the cases that already slipped through could be tracked down and transmission halted.

We didn't have the sequence or samples, we couldn't do the test kits then.

Be careful about trying to book with DL miles from China (or most of Asia) to the USA through Europe. This isn't a legal routing for DL (even during IROPs that are DL's fault) and will require two separate award tickets. If somehow they're not issued as two fare components on the same ticket/PNR, you could be denied boarding for not being admissible (I assume) for the EU/France. There could also be issues with checking luggage through: if this isn't done when you check in at PVG, you would need to enter France to claim and recheck the bags, which again gets to the same issues of whether you're admissible as well as needing to satisfy additional testing/quarantine/documentation requirements.