narvik

It's FAST moving, with new developments each day, it seems.VISA-FREE 24/48/144 hours transit is coming back:

"China will also resume the implementation of a policy allowing visa-free transit of up to 144 hours for travellers. The extension or renewal of foreigners' visas will also be restored, the immigration administration added."
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/reuters...rules/48163068

travelinmanS

Just saw this announcement from the shanghai entry exit bureau. I’m shocked they are doing this so quickly, but happy as well! Hopefully they rip the plastic off the e-channel machines and get that going again as well!

narvik

Oh, yeah. I just about forgot about those! I bet I will need to re-register to use them.

travelinmanS

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/12/28/p...ina/index.html

Now other countries seem worried about the Covid impact of the opening up.

I’d suggest Chinese travelers should be greeted with 14 days locked in a hotel room on arrival served slop for food with no contact with the outside world apart from daily nose swabs. All at the low cost of $100/day. 😁

xooz

Loyalty Lobby posted that Japan will require testing for arrivals from China. Will be interesting to see how they treat connecting passengers from China connecting to US.

Davvidd

This is like a Spike Milligan story. When China was having draconian lockdowns everyone else was shouting how horrible it is for the Chinese and they should not be locked down. Now the Chinese have opened up everyone else is shouting about wanting to lock down the Chinese. It is unbelievable.

m.y

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/28/polit...ina/index.html

American officials have expressed deep concerns about China’s lack of transparency surrounding the most recent surge in cases, particularly the absence of genome sequencing information that could help detect new strains of the coronavirus.Officials said China uploaded “only about 100” new sequences to public databases in recent weeks, “including Omicron subvariants such as BA.5,” but the small sample size leaves room for concern, the CDC said.

“What we’re concerned about is a new variant may emerge actually in China,” one official said. “With so many people in China being infected in a short period of time, there is a chance and probability that a new variant will emerge.”

It's not without reason, China has basically stopped doing testing and there's no data that detects possibilities of new variant. During height of Omicron wave in the US, US reported hundreds of thousands of cases per day (still reporting avg 50k+ cases per day today), while the Chinese government only reported a few thousand cases up to about a week ago and now they have stopped report daily numbers. It's Dec 2019 all over again.

travelinmanS

China should have opened up early this year along with everyone else. Keeping people locked down like they did WAS horrible, inhumane and stupid. It gave me, a constant defender of China, a new view on the perils of uncontested power.

moondog

They reported A LOT of cases during April and May in Shanghai. I suspect this was a combination of transparency and scare tactics (e.g. rat out your neighbors).

m.y

During April and May in Shanghai it was hard to cover up the numbers as they had to ship patients to the centralized quarantine facilities and it would be hard to justify the harsh lock downs without numbers backing it up. China went from one extreme (citywide lockdowns, sealing doors, mandatory quarantine) to another extreme (not testing, not reporting COVID deaths, down playing the danger of COVID) in a matter of weeks.

Fresh off the press today, China reporting 1 (that's right ONE) new death from COVID, and 5000 new cases yesterday.
https://weibo.com/1642088277/MlNbehq...ag=1001030103_

moondog

IMO, the laziness GRADUALLY picked up speed in July when they went to 10 swabs per tube, and tests stopped being so invasive.

tauphi

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...ina-have-covid

Milan Reports 50% of Passengers on China Flights Have Covid

Davvidd

Why should they? No one opened up instantly. Everyone did according to their own national interests. I have no issues about China opening up but when they did everyone is in an uproar. It was horrible to be locked down. Now it is not so the case most western countries are in an uproar because they might spread a new variant of the covid. Possibly true and it is possibly true for any other country too.

narvik

It's yo-yo time! Whoever has less active cases will impose restrictions on countries who have more.
If/once China has less cases, they'll probably restart imposing entry restrictions in retaliation of what is about to happen to travelers from China.

I'd not single out one particular country; the whole world showed its incompetence with this whole pandemic. I'm definitely not looking forward to any future pandemic where the virus/disease is far more deadly than this one.

Davvidd

I entirely agree with you. It has been shambolic to say the least. No one comes out with any credit. I do not think this is the end of this if it is the way this is going. But it is a case of death by a thousand cuts. The Asian countries would not mostly impose any restrictions or much restrictions on Chinese arrivals. In fact they are happy they are coming. I wish the Chinese government would also screen them before they leave but I guess once they open up, they are passing the buck to the receiving countries as if to say you want us to open up, now we have opened up and now it is your problem to deal with it.

I simply do not understand how they can ask for PCR tests unless they come directly from China? This is once again going to create a but of a mess for airlines who carry Chinese passengers via third countries too.