- China will fully reopen its borders and allow tourists back into the country after three years of pandemic restrictions.
- China’s embassies abroad will resume issuing various categories of visas to foreigners from March 15, 2023
- Chinese visas that were issued before March 28, 2020 and remain within the valid period will be reactivated.
- China ended the “zero-COVID” policy in early December 2022, and starting January 8, 2023, opened its borders for family reunions and ended the mandatory quarantine for international arrivals.
- The move was welcomed by most people in China who had grown weary of lockdowns.
China will fully reopen its borders and allow tourists back into the country after three years of pandemic restrictions. China’s embassies abroad will resume issuing various categories of visas to foreigners from March 15, 2023 the Department of Consular Affairs of the Foreign Ministry in Beijing said.
Foreigners “with valid visas issued before March 28, 2020 will be allowed to enter China”, the National Immigration Administration said in a notice, adding that it had “decided to adjust policies of foreigners’ visas and entry from 0:00 on March 15, 2023 in order to better coordinate COVID-19 prevention and control with economic and social development, and to facilitate personnel exchanges between China and other countries”. The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi in a notice on its website on Tuesday confirmed that “Chinese visas that were issued before March 28, 2020 and remains within the valid period will be reactivated.” It added.
The announcements marked the withdrawal of the last remaining travel restrictions that had been in place for close to three years. Since early 2020, China had some of the most stringent travel restrictions of anywhere in the world, and was essentially closed off from international travel Starting last year, Beijing began to allow small batches of foreign students back into the country, with many, including thousands of medical students from India, seeing their education put on hold for more than two years as well as having their graduation plans disrupted.
China ended the “zero-COVID” policy in early December 2022, and starting January 8, 2023, opened its borders for family reunions and ended the mandatory quarantine for international arrivals. This followed the Chinese government downgrading management of COVID-19 from a Class A to Class B infectious disease, no longer allowing for lockdowns and quarantine.
On Monday, the new Premier Li Qiang, speaking in his first press conference following the conclusion of the annual National People’s Congress which last week formally endorsed President Xi Jinping’s third five-year term, defended the transition away from zero-COVID. While the move was welcomed by most people in China who had grown weary of lockdowns, it was also criticised for the messy ending as well as the wave of elderly deaths due to low vaccination booster rates.
