Some Chinese expressed disappointment with the Biden administration’s new testing requirement for travelers coming from their country. Others radiated contempt, calling it the latest Western attempt to contain China’s rise. But many were simply indifferent.
For many Chinese, the US rule that they must present negative Covid tests to visit is a tangential development. China is grappling with severe outbreaks that have sickened countless people and overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes. Many are focused on keeping their jobs and homes as the economy sputters.
And for many of those considering travel, an additional Covid test is not a major inconvenience. Such tests were until recently – for many tens of millions of citizens – an almost daily routine imposed by the authorities. And Chinese tourists know they are welcome in many places in Asia and beyond.
“It’s just a Covid test before we travel,” said Li Kuan, 33, a software engineer at a technology start-up in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “We’ve done a number of these kinds of tests over the last three years.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention rule, announced Wednesday, requires negative tests from anyone, regardless of nationality or vaccination status, who wants to board a flight to the U.S. in China. It applies to travelers in Hong Kong and Macau, as well as anyone coming from China who is transiting the United States or entering the country through a third country.
The rule will take effect on January 5, three days before China plans to lift strict quarantine requirements for inbound travelers for nearly three years.
People around the world are excited about the potential boon to business and tourism that would come with a surge in Chinese tourists. But some are also concerned about how the number of cases in the country has exploded since early December, when China abruptly lifted its “zero Covid” policy following massive protests over lockdowns threatening the ruling Communist Party.
Officials in the United States fear the coronavirus will spread rapidly in China, allowing new variants to develop and spread around the world.
On Wednesday, the CDC said travelers from China needed a negative Covid test to slow the spread of the virus in the United States. As new variants of the virus emerge around the world, China’s “reduced” testing and case reporting and “minimal” sharing of epidemiological data could delay their identification, the agency said.
Italy and Japan have recently imposed similar travel restrictions, and India is now requiring negative Covid test results and random screening at airports for passengers arriving from China, including Hong Kong, as well as Japan, South Korea and Thailand.
Understand the situation in China
The Communist Party rejected the restrictive ‘zero Covid’ policy, which sparked mass protests that posed a rare challenge to the Communist leadership.
On Thursday, the main propaganda channels of the Communist Party in China, which are usually quick to criticize countries that impose restrictions on Chinese travelers, appeared to downplay the US news. The CDC rule itself was barely mentioned on many of the party’s main platforms.
Some sites instead emphasized the positive reception China’s easing is getting in other countries. “China’s New Measures ‘Boost Global Economic Hopes’,” read an article in the Communist Party newspaper Global Times.
Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said China’s official media could be wary of overreporting the US restriction, fearing it would draw attention to China’s domestic outbreaks and the spark public anger.
“If you talk about this too much, you’re going to make mistakes,” he said.
For Beijing, it could be difficult to make the argument that the United States should not impose a testing requirement when China itself still intends to enforce one even after relaxing the rules. The government will require inbound travelers to show a negative polymerase chain reaction or PCR test within 48 hours of departure.
At a routine news briefing in Beijing on Thursday, Wang Wenbin, a State Department spokesman, did not directly comment on the Biden administration’s move. He reiterated the talking points Beijing has been using over the past week as some countries began imposing limits on Chinese travelers, saying those pandemic measures should be “scientific and appropriate.”
But this time, he pointedly referred to the issue of discrimination, saying that such measures should also “treat citizens of all countries equally”.
Some Chinese citizens shrugged off the US testing requirement, citing it as a minor inconvenience to a population that has grown accustomed to near-constant PCR testing during the pandemic.
China’s testing requirements for Covid-era international travelers were “much more complicated” than what the United States is now requiring of travelers from the country, said Wang Xiaofei, 29, who works for a technology company in the southern megacity of Shenzhen.
“It is what it is,” she said of the testing policy, adding that she would still travel to the United States if given the chance. “Just cooperate.”
Others were less accommodating.
Iris Su, 22, a university student in New York City, said her parents, who live in the eastern city of Qingdao, were thinking of visiting her after the week-long Chinese New Year holiday in late January. “Now they’re not so sure,” she said. “They’re a little unhappy with the US restrictions.”
Ms. Su said she saw the CDC regime as a political move, not a scientific one. “Ultimately, this is all a confrontation between great powers,” she added.
Several epidemiologists said on Thursday the new US policy would be ineffective, based on evidence from other places — including Hong Kong, a Chinese territory, which earlier this year introduced a series of testing requirements for inbound travelers. could not prevent a significant increase in the number of imported cases.
Karen Grépin, an expert on global health policy at the University of Hong Kong, said that while the CDC’s new rule may prevent superspreader conditions on airplanes, it won’t stop new variants — much like previous bans on international travel throughout did little to stop the spread. of the Omicron variant.
“What we really should be doing now as a global community is thinking about how we can support the Chinese people in this transition, not shut them down,” she said.
It was unclear Thursday how or if the new CDC rule would affect China’s delicate relationship with the United States. When President Biden and Xi Jinping, China’s powerful leader, met in Indonesia last month, they seemed eager for a gentle reset of a relationship that was looming on the brink of confrontation. Yet the relationship remains at its lowest point in years, due in part to disagreements over Taiwan’s future, technological limitations and China’s mass detentions of its citizens.
Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, described the CDC rule as “epidemiologically unconvincing and diplomatically unjustified.”
“The general reopening should be encouraged,” he said, referring to China’s plan to gradually dismantle its Covid testing infrastructure and travel restrictions. “Now you give the Chinese the impression that you are punishing them.”
Mr Huang said he sympathized with international criticism of China’s alleged reluctance to share coronavirus data with other countries. But he also worries that the CDC requirement could feed Chinese nationalists who argue that the United States is trying to contain China’s rise.
That was the tone of some pages of the Global Times on Thursday.
“The outbreak of Covid tells China this time to recognize a fundamental fact,” Shen Yi, a professor of international politics at Fudan University in Shanghai, wrote in a column.
“That is, China’s words, actions and various policies will be scrutinized at the electron microscope level by American and Western public opinion and anti-China politicians,” he wrote. “If there is a small error, it will be magnified infinitely; if an error cannot be found, they create it artificially.”