Tag: Lunar New Year

As China Drops Travel Rules, Wariness Rises Over its Covid Outbreak

Chin@Strategy

For the past three years, China largely shut its borders and kept its people home, retreating from the global engagement that was the foundation for its rise. As the country now prepares to gradually reopen its doors to help rescue a faltering economy, the world is both excited about the potential boon for business and tourism, but wary about exposure to a country facing an explosion of Covid cases. Starting Jan. 8, China will drop its strict quarantine requirements for travelers arriving from abroad and lift rules that had limited…

China’s Looming ‘Tsunami’ of Covid Cases Will Test Its Hospitals

Chin@Strategy

Until recently, China, the world’s most populous nation, was also the world’s last Covid holdout. But in a matter of weeks it will be hit by a wave that a top health official predicts could infect many hundreds of millions of people. This week, Beijing took its biggest step toward living with Covid, all but abandoning an unpopular and costly “zero Covid” policy of lockdowns and mass quarantines it had hoped would eliminate infections. The abrupt pivot has raised the specter of tremendous strain on a health care system that…

From the U.S. to China: A 3-Month Quarantine Horror Story

Chin@Strategy

Before boarding his flight from Los Angeles to the Chinese city of Guangzhou, Xue Liangquan, a California-based lawyer, knew he was in for a bit of a headache. To visit his parents in eastern Shandong Province in January, for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began, Mr. Xue, 37, had already shelled out $7,600 for airfare. He had submitted negative test results to the Chinese authorities, as required for entry. Upon arrival, he would have to do three weeks of quarantine. Even so, he never could have foreseen just…

Collateral Damage of China’s Virus Policy: Fruit

Chin@Strategy

HANOI, Vietnam — At Pham Thanh Hong’s dragon fruit orchard in Vietnam, most of the lights are turned off. All is silent except for the periodic thud of the ripe pink fruit falling to the ground. Mr. Pham, 46, is not bothering to harvest them. The farmer watched dragon fruit prices plummet by 25 percent in the last week of December to near zero, pushed down by what several officials in Vietnam say is China’s “zero-Covid” policy. “I’m too disheartened to use my strength to pick them up, then throw…

Omicron Surge in Asia Restricts Travel for Lunar New Year

Chin@Strategy

The Omicron variant has dampened the plans of tens of millions of people across several Asian countries to travel during the Lunar New Year, as officials battle the pandemic for a third year. Observed this year on Feb. 1, Lunar New Year falls just as many countries are seeing surges in coronavirus cases. Omicron is becoming the dominant variant in countries like South Korea, which expects up to 90 percent of its cases to be Omicron-related by the end of February. Before the pandemic, as many as three billion trips…

China’s Covid Outbreak Complicates Safety Plan for Beijing Olympics

Chin@Strategy

When China’s leader Xi Jinping inspected the Beijing Winter Olympics venues last week, he laid out his vision for a “green, safe and simple” event. But diplomatic boycotts and, increasingly, the fast-spreading Omicron variant of the coronavirus may make safety and simplicity near impossible to achieve, at least by Beijing’s stringent “zero Covid” standards. With less than a month to go until the opening of the Winter Games, Chinese officials are racing to extinguish a spate of coronavirus infections around the country, including several locally transmitted cases of the Omicron…