What’s new: China continued to suspend group overseas tours and discourage individuals from going abroad for sightseeing or visiting friends and families as a part of efforts to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, the country’s immigration office said Monday.
The National Immigration Administration advised citizens not to leave China unless necessary and said those who have overseas travel plans should take full account of the risks and uncertainties of doing so, said Liu Haitao, director general of the administration’s Department of Frontier Inspection and Management, at a routine press conference Monday.
Immigration authorities will process documents in a timely manner for those who need to go abroad for epidemic prevention and control work, medical treatment, delivery of relief supplies or production and living materials, participation in key engineering projects or organized labor groups, business purposes, scientific research purposes or academic purposes, Liu said.
Necessary overseas travel also includes those who need to look after severely sick people, help take care of seniors, children or pregnant women, and attend relatives’ weddings, graduations and family reunions, the official said.
The latest policies mean it will be almost impossible for outbound tourism to resume in the short term, and inbound tourism is not attractive to foreign visitors, said Zhou Mingqi, founder of tourism consultancy firm Jingjian Consulting in Shanghai.
The background: Under the “zero-Covid” policy, China has been restricting both inbound and outbound international air travel since early 2020.
China’s civil aviation regulator vowed in April to firmly stick to the zero-Covid policy and general strategy to “prevent imported cases and resurgence of internal cases” as the country battles the worst pandemic outbreak in two years.
Since the beginning of 2022, China has suspended 664 international flights, about 40% of the total number of suspended flights since circuit-breaker measures were put in place in June 2020, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said.
Contact reporter Denise Jia (huijuanjia@caixin.com) and editor Bob Simison (bob.simison@caixin.com)
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