Complete bull. Hey why don't we have an identical policy for the US except let's have a group that is majority owned by AA, DL, and UA do the testing, and have the power to suspend CA, MU, and CZ flights based on the results of those tests. What could possibly go wrong here?!? Because look at who owns a majority stake in CA, CZ, and MU.

You know how much money the US has spent fighting COVID-19? What fraction of that money would have to be directed to universities to make up for the "lost" revenue? 1%?

Or less than 1%.

https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/...ised-to-hit-6t

On March 10, 2021, it was reported that US spending on COVID relief hit 6 Trillion USD. The total should be even more now.

https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2021/0...united-states/

There are 372,000 Chinese students in the US. It is estimated that their tuition fees and living expenses contributed US$16 billion in 2019.

Even if all these students return to China, the $16 billion spending is about 0.4% of 6 trillion on COVID relief in the US.

Let's put things in perspective.

The visa reciprocity issue is completely separate than the flight cancellations issue.

Visa reciprocity is probably a more effective tool than cancelling flights. China clearly doesn’t care about anyone (even their own citizens) outside the country.

But if overseas Chinese citizens have their visas cancelled and their flights back to the mainland are cancelled, well now they have a problem.

Exactly, so their numbers are inconsequential, and their economic contributions to our universities are inconsequential in comparison to the money being thrown around, just like the number of PRC citizens in the PRC who care about overseas travel. So if they happen to become a casualty of the tit for tat, so be it.

Cancel the visas of the family members of CCP officials. Then you put pressure on the CCP to change the policy because the members whose sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, etc., are studying in the US would now either be stuck there or they cannot go back home to visit without getting indefinitely banned from the US (which would make them unable to go back to school). It should be pretty easy to revoke the "in & out privileges" of any CCP official family members by revoking their visas. This also means that any CCP officials whose family members were planning to study in the US starting next fall wouldn't be able to start their studies because they'd be unable to enter the US (unless they are already in the US and do not leave).

The zero COVID policy may be popular with the public, and for people who don't travel overseas, the inconveniences are only theoretical. Even people who do have family members traveling overseas or who do so themselves might be willing to put up with quarantine to try to keep COVID out. But once it starts affecting their ability to see their family members at all and or starts hitting their pocketbooks (i.e. by requiring them to fly directly from the PRC to the US and pay the exorbitant prices of those airfares), that's when it starts to hit home. So the US should start turning those levers and make it as painful as possible for the people who come up with these policies.

What exactly is your objective here? Have China adopt a policy that you know is unpopular with the public? Bring disease to hundreds of millions of people? Do you think about how it makes you look?

As a US citizen who is currently effectively banned from traveling to the PRC at all despite having a valid 10 year visa, I expect my government to stand up for me by banning PRC citizens from visiting my country in turn until this stupid policy stops.

Quarantines are medically necessary to stop the spread of disease, if your goal is zero COVID. I'm not debating whether that is realistic or not here. But if that is the goal, there is zero scientific reason for requiring all US citizens to fly directly from the US if flights through other countries are cheaper or for temporarily invalidating all visas issued prior to March 2020. There is no difference in the ability of US citizens vs. PRC citizens to carry viruses, and the quarantines are there to stop this from happening (this is why I was also critical of the previous US administration's travel "ban" that allowed US citizens to return to the US directly from the PRC and then walk off the plane directly into the general population). If you're willing to sit through a quarantine, you should be allowed to visit. If the PRC side isn't going to be reasonable and issue only regulations backed up by science, then I expect my government to engage in a tit for tat with them to make it as painful for them as possible to get this idiocy to stop.

So, basically, you're just really pissed off that you can't get to China.
Got it. :cool:

You completely missed STS-134's point.

We are not debating the health policies by countries about COVID, or quarantine requirements etc.

We are talking about unilateral actions by the Chinese government to treat US citizens. PRC has suspended their 10-year visas and basically banned US citizens to visit China.

OTOH, PRC citizens with 10-year US visas are welcome to visit the US, as long as they have vaccination and negative test.

No. He is pissed off that China has taken all sorts of unreasonable measures against US citizens, such as suspending their visas, not allowing them to fly to China via Japan etc. when they DO have the visa and RP. Not to mention this "circuit break policy" against US airlines.

Exactly.

I applaud the DOT for standing up to China and suspending flights by Chinese carriers. Last year when China tried to limit UA/AA/DL to only ONE weekly flight, the DOT responded by canceling flights by Chinese carriers. In two days, China backed off and allowed UA/AA/DL to operate 4 weekly flights.

China's so called 5-1 policy (one country, one airline, one weekly flight) clearly violates China-US aviation treaty. The US government must draw a hardline on the sand.

Banning US citizens entering China from a third country, or when they merely transit from a third country such as SFO-NRT-PVG, or transit from HK, even if they have valid visa and resident permit, is unjustified, arbitrary, and unfair.

I urge the Biden Administration to raise this issue to PRC. If China doesn't back off, the US should ban all Chinese citizens entering the US transiting from another country or region such as Japan, HK, Canada, Europe etc.

Or suspend their 10 -year US visas.

The issue is US can't do this for every country who imposes harsher conditions of entry than US itself e.g. New Zealand.

Why not? South Korea imposed reciprocal bans on countries like Australia and New Zealand.

Maybe US doesn't bother fighting with New Zealand.

The number of Americans want to visit New Zealand can't compare to US citizens whose 10-year visas have been suspended by China.

It's not even close.

I think each country sets their immigration policy in their own self interest. China has obviously decided that keeping Covid out of China is more important than having businesspeople from other countries visit (not just the USA, this policy applies to every country in the world). The USA thinks it's worth keeping itself open to visitors with visas, as is its right and to be honest the USA doesn't have much worry about foreigners causing more covid as they have a let it rip policy domestically.

People can complain all they want but the policies are based in self interest on both sides.

Crankyflier noted the cut in flights and forecast no changes in immediate future https://crankyflier.com/2022/01/18/t...merican-skies/

Then again NZ is 1/280th the population of China.

Unless US emulates South Korea, US will lose a principles-based spat on this. Also, is it necessarily constructive to the United States to stop unilateral travel?

To be fair a lot of Chinese citizens in the US are already stuck there right now regardless of CCP affiliation.

For example if a Chinese citizen is on a H1B visa in the US they need to return to China or a third (non US) country to do a process called H1B stamping every so often. If they don’t do this process the visa expires, basically banning them from re entering the US. They can stay in the US without major problems.

Now the problem is that the 3+ week quarantine plus the time to actually do the stamping isn’t feasible for a lot of people with US-based jobs. The visa stamping for US consulates in China was also suspended until the travel ban from China to the US was lifted. Going to a third country is risky because if the US consulate there doesn’t stamp it for some reason, the person cannot re enter the US. So they need to fly back to China and get forced into 3+ week quarantine anyway. Also most countries’ consulates prioritize their own citizens over everyone else.

For what it’s worth many Indian citizens in the US also have this problem, apparently there are many chat groups with the purpose of snagging the first US consulate appointment in India even if it is months or years out.

* forgive me, I forget the difference between consulate, embassy, etc

As an aside, I'm finally starting to hear some rumblings of discontent from my Chinese friends here who were very pro-government Covid policy for the last 2 years. It seems to me that the policies that discourage or outright ban returning to their home town for the Spring Festival for a 2nd or 3rd year in a row is getting many people to re-consider the wisdom of this zero Covid. In addition, now that they have started to lock people into shopping malls or their apartments in tier one cities for a few days just for having breathed the same air as a suspected close contact, there is additional pushback against such measures. Maybe things will slowly start changing if the discontent keeps growing.

Why not? It's not like Biden would have to look at what each country is doing himself. He could delegate to one individual for each region of the world the task of looking at what countries are doing to US citizens, and have that individual responsible for reciprocating that policy with a US policy for that country's citizens.

Yep. I am hearing the same complaints in China about the "do not travel to your hometown this year for CNY" policy. But this is still in its infancy. China is on track to be the last country to achieve a decent level of immunity against covid and reopen.

I would guess that the earliest China would reopen is the end of the year, after Xi gets his third term, assuming Omicron peters out and there isn't a worse variant after.

People in China grumble about things all the time. Garbage sorting, after school classes, housing prices, whatever. Doesn't amount to anything.

The questions need to be posed in perspective, with the drawbacks in mind.

If you ask these people the choice is between getting locked in or getting sick, they'll pick the former. If the choice is between not going home for CNY or getting sick, they'll pick the former.

I"ve seen the same grumblings about covid policy as you. But I have not seen any widespread sentiment that the policies need to be loosened up. In fact, I've heard plenty of talk that the policies should be *tightened*, because of leakages during the +7 monitoring, or overseas packages, etc.

If there’s one thing that makes absolutely zero impact on the policy of the Chinese government, it’s the grumblings of the 0.1% of people in China whole have a realistic viewpoint of the severity of covid and covid policies. The moment you have a billion people who are disgruntled by covid policies, there might be a point. But 99% of Chinese people are fed a CCP curated abomination of reality about what’s going on in China and the outside world. They are happy to strap on their masks all day, flash QR codes all day, and take their covid tests every 2 days and never dream of crossing an international border.

For instance, when I explain to Chinese colleagues that I have had covid and every single person in America that I’m friends or family with has had covid with symptoms well aligned to a moderate cold, they look at me like I am a ghost. And they insist that my organs are permanently damaged.

China CCP has full grip of its people and covid.

The fact that normal people are still trying to fly here cracks me up.

Chinese people have not been treating their COVID fears rationally. They are, as you say, too paranoid. The odds of dying from the disease is low. The odds of them catching the disease at this point is even more miniscule.

However, you're not treating this disease rationally either. Your personal experience doesn't matter, at all. Mortality rates of current variants are well understood, and it's under 1%. This is a number that doesn't contradict your experience, but it's caused almost 900k deaths in the US alone, a country with 1/4 the population of China. You're advocating a policy that will create far more deaths than this. Your "realistic viewpoint" is a crime against humanity. This is the true abomination here, not whatever the CCP policy is. Not to mention 100x more people who survive but still fall ill. Even if it's just flu symptoms (but flu symptoms is not a guarantee, no matter how you claim it is), I think many people would still prefer wearing a mask to getting sick.

No one has found a good solution to open up and prevent widespread disease yet. With omicron, countries (singapore, austrailia, etc) that have recently opened up (even with high vaxed numbers) are now experiencing huge case loads. I bet they wish they can close down again, but the cat's out of the box. And that's the other big factor at play here -- there's uncertainty because you don't know how the disease will mutate. We *know* that with current rates, opening up will cause millions of deaths. But with the pandora's box open, who knows what else will happen.

You are right in that before Omicron, perhaps Asian countries would've opened up as most of the population becomes vaccinated, but with Omicron, there really is no middle ground, either you try to keep it at zero, or it will spread exponentially. So yes while I don't like many of the zero covid policies, I do understand why China, but also democracies like Taiwan and Korea are trying to keep COVID away.

Korea and Japan both have exponential case numbers now, not sure it counts anymore

Also last time I checked around Thanksgiving there’s a quarantine exception in Korea if you have direct family members there, lol

I didn't say they are successful at it :p. Even in China there have been many cases (by Chinese standard) in Beijing in the past few weeks. Who knows, maybe they are just waiting for the Olympics to start so they can blame the cases on the foreigners (after blaming frozen food and international mail)

First successful transit via Taiwan from Thailand recorded in today's Shanghai Covid report:

病例3为中国籍，在泰国工作，自泰国出发，经台湾地区转机，于2022年1月20日抵达上海浦东国际机场，入关后 即被集中隔离观察，其间出现症状。综合流行病学史、临床症状、实验室检测和影像学检查结果等，诊断为确诊病 例。

Case 3 is a Chinese national working in Thailand, who travelled from Thailand and transited via Taiwan, arriving in PVG on 2022/01/20.

Any details? I thought transit through another country was supposed to be against the current policy.

Mainland China will include people with Republic of China travel documents as Chinese nationals

I assume the individual in question has a ROC passport and a Mainland Travel Permit for Taiwan Residents. Unlike PRC visas, Mainland Travel Permits were never canceled.

Nope, Taiwanese nationals are always listed in the official Shanghai Covid report as 台湾地区居民, and not 中国籍。

Here is an example from 2022/01/09:
病例7为中国籍，病例8为台湾地区居民，病例7、病例8在美国旅行，自美国出发，乘坐同一航班，于2022年1月3日抵达上海浦东 国际机场，入关后即被集中隔离观察，其间出现症状。综合流行病学史、临床症状、实验室检测和影像学检查结果 等，诊断为确诊病例。

No details I'm afraid. But I suspect it's going to be similar to the previous HK transit cases, i.e., the departing airline incorrectly allowed the transit passengers to board the first flight to Taiwan, and once in Taiwan no transit rules were enforced.

Taiwan and HK are both places where you can fly to China without a green code.

Thanks as always for providing helpful information.

One question on the above regarding Taiwan and HK not requiring green code to fly to China:
Does this apply to local HK and Taiwan citizens or does it also apply to expats who live and work in HK and Taiwan on long term working visa?

China Airlines website says they do not allow transit to the Mainland from an international flight into Taiwan. Very curious how this person managed to board a flight to Taiwan in the first place.

This is my only semi-realistic beef at present. Well, I guess it's a little more complicated.

1. The Chinese should allow people to do their -7 and -2 tests at their points of origin. While I realize there are a lot of sketchy Covid test places (e.g. you basically pay for a negative result), they had no trouble vetting clinics near (or not so near in the case of DTW) gateway airports, and even approved a national chain for SEA departing passengers
2. They should eliminate the direct flight rule, possibly with some exceptions (e.g. Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Korea should be okay, but it's cool if they prohibit some transit points)

I look at this mostly from a cost (to passenger) perspective. I haven't checked US-China fares in a few weeks, but my most recent data point was $5500+ for all flights, except for some of the LAX departures (to places you probably have no interest in going). The -7 rule is an additional pain point. If you need to stay in a hotel near your gateway airport for 7 nights, that's $1500+. Tack on an additional $1000 for your Covid tests (assuming SF or SanJo; other gateways offer cheaper options). So, that's $8000. And, if your flight is canceled, you're on the hook for additional hotel nights, and probably another Covid test.

Meanwhile, there are many sub $1500 flight options for US-China via third countries. And, I'd like to think that PRC-approved Covid tests in most US cities would cost $200 or less each.

IMO, $2000 v $8000 is a substantial difference for many people.

The green code is simply a condition that you have to satisfy before you can check into your flight. When flying from HK/Taiwan there is no such requirement at check-in. Otherwise you must still satisfy the same requirements as in pre-Covid times, in other words a valid Chinese visa/RP before you are allowed to check into a flight to China from HK/Taiwan. Your residency in Taiwan/HK is irrelevant for the check-in process. That is, even if you are currently in HK or Taiwan with a visitor's visa, you are still allowed to fly to China. Of course, if you're not a resident of Taiwan/HK, you can't currently enter either of them from abroad (unless you can obtain an exemption, e.g., through a resident spouse).

If you are travelling from HK there is also the option of a land border crossing, either at Shenzhen Bay or via the Zhuhai bridge.

Since the trip started in Thailand, most likely they didn't check in with China Airlines at all. Clearly the transit ban was not enforced after they arrived in Taiwan.

You can obtain a green code if you stay in Korea for 30 days or longer before flying to China. This is explicitly stated on the Seoul Embassy website.

These transit bans are enforced by each individual embassy so there is no blanket rule.

At least Thailand works as well in this regard (no 30-day rule there), and I assume many other countries.

The ban is intended to prevent people from flying via Canada, Europe, or Japan/Korea, using simple same/next day connections. These flights are often cheap and should be allowed, assuming China actually wants tourists and students to visit again.

What would possibly make you think China wants tourists and students to visit?

I suppose the hospitality industry doesn't really need foreign visitors in order to thrive, in part due to the fact that Chinese people who would normally go to places like Paris or New York now have to settle with domestic destinations, and have boatloads of coin to spend.

However, the same can't be said about students. Foreign students provide the exact same benefit to Chinese universities as Chinese students do to schools like UCR and Northeastern (cash cows). I also believe foreign students provide intangible value to their Chinese classmates, most of whom want to improve their English and enjoy healthy discourse about world affairs, but I realize Beijing might not be especially swayed by this line of thinking.

Agree with you about the benefit of having international students. And more than agree that this benefit will be sacrificed at the drop of a hat if it conflicts with any other "national interests" goal.

Good to see you back! ;)