China also recently removed Covid-19 test requirements for inbound travellers from a number of countries including the USA.
IATA’s regional vice president for north Asia Xie Xingquan says: “Evidence confirms that border measures are not an effective global strategy to control a pandemic. As long as there is still a quarantine, it will be a disincentive for people considering travel to China, especially when many parts of Asia are already allowing quarantine free travel.”
In May, IATA director-general Willie Walsh called China’s continued closure a “clearly disappointing” move, though he noted that it would not pose a key challenge to regional recovery, with airlines already reassessing the importance of the Chinese market.
China is one of the last few major economies in the world to doggedly pursue a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy, one which has reduced international travel demand to record lows.
China’s civil aviation regulators impose what is known as a ‘circuit breaker’ mechanism for inbound international flights, where an airline has to suspend flights for a specific period if it is found to be carrying Covid-positive passengers.
It also put a tight lid on international flight quotas, with airlines only allowed one or two flights per week.
It also appears that Beijing’s ‘zero-Covid’ strategy is unlikely to go away any time soon: a report from state-owned media, citing a top official, claims Beijing would maintain its pandemic curbs “for the next five years”.
The disclosure was later attributed to be a misquote and any reference of a timeline for the pandemic curbs was scrubbed from the internet.