Beijing opens borders and several countries announce restrictions on Chinese travellers 

After three years closed to the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, China will reopen its borders, both for its citizens and for other countries. As of 8 January, Beijing will begin to relax travel restrictions. For example, quarantine will no longer be required for Chinese tourists returning home.

This will boost tourism in Asian countries such as Thailand and Japan, whose largest source of foreign visitors comes from China. "There is no doubt that mainland China is the spark plug for Thailand's tourism recovery," Bill Barnett, managing director of hotel consultancy C9 Hotelworks, told Reuters.  

The same is true of other countries in the region such as Malaysia and Vietnam. Airlines in both nations expect flights to China to reach pre-pandemic levels by June 2023. At the moment, international flights to and from China are only 8% of pre-coronavirus levels, according to Reuters. However, the news agency also notes - based on analysts - that Chinese airlines are likely to experience significant increases from the end of March.

After several years under a strict "zero covid" policy imposed by the Chinese authorities, the country's citizens have welcomed this major change. Travel service companies Trip.com and Qunar indicated that international ticket bookings and searches for visa information on their websites increased five- to eight-fold after Beijing announced the measure. Top destinations for Chinese tourists include Japan, Thailand, South Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, AP reports. 

The luxury industry also welcomes Beijing's new measure, as China accounts for 21% of the €350 billion global luxury goods market.

However, the opening of Chinese borders also raises fears of a new wave of global contagion. Recently, the Asian giant has once again experienced an explosion of new cases, causing hospitals and crematoria in the country to collapse.  

For this reason, many countries are wary of the arrival of Chinese travellers in early 2023, also coinciding with the Chinese New Year, which begins on 22 January.  

Japan, India, Malaysia, Italy, the United States and Taiwan have already announced restrictions on Chinese tourists. Others such as Australia, Germany, Thailand and France have indicated that they would not impose additional measures on Chinese travellers for the time being.

"There is growing concern in the international community about the ongoing surges of COVID-19 in China and the lack of transparent data, including viral genomic sequence data, being reported from the People's Republic of China," US officials said. 

Despite the critical outlook in the country, China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has assured that "the development of China's epidemic situation is generally predictable and under control". Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that Western media reports on the coronavirus in China are "completely biased". Wenbin also spoke of "exaggeration, defamation and political manipulation with ulterior motives".

In addition to opening the borders, Beijing has also announced that from January it will only publish COVID-19-related data once a month. In this sense, the health crisis would be managed in category B as the disease "has become less viral".