Outrage in China over Covid tests imposed abroad

First modification: 01/04/2023 – 11:10

With Stéphane Lagarde and Louise May, RFI China correspondents

For the third time in a row, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denounced what it considers an irrational decision. “Some countries have established restrictions aimed only at travelers from China (…) these practices are unacceptable,” Mao Ning, one of the spokesmen for Chinese diplomacy, told reporters on Tuesday. Beijing, he added, could take countermeasures based on the “principle of reciprocity.”

He also stated that the adoption of restrictions by some countries lacked “scientific basis”. “We strongly oppose attempts to manipulate health measures to achieve political goals,” he added.

The remarks come a month after the lifting of epidemic prevention and control measures, which triggered a tsunami of infections in Chinese megacities and a saturation of the hospital system.

Also and, above all, they arrive after almost three years of closing the Chinese borders, with drastic sanitary restrictions at the entrance.

The latter, and in particular the quarantines, will be abolished as of this Sunday, but a negative PCR test will continue to be required within 48 hours for passengers coming from abroad.

What do the Chinese think?

These measures have also caused misunderstanding among some Chinese. At an immigration office in central Beijing, Tuesday was a busy day. Entry and exit documents were being handed out as the Chinese are allowed to travel again.

A family has just collected their passports to travel to the United States. The father left delighted. “For too long we couldn’t travel for tourism. Now we can, it’s great,” he said. But the problems are “the passages”. There aren’t many planes yet, “he lamented. As for the required negative test, he relativized:” It’s not really that bad, it’s just that people are worried about whether there are sub-variants in China.

“Isn’t that a big deal?” A young woman from Beijing who intends to study abroad disagrees: “I don’t understand these decisions. The epidemic situation is more serious abroad. They are the ones who can infect us. So I feel discriminated against. They fear that the virus will mutate.” , it states.

It is difficult to take a position when, for three years and until a few weeks ago, China’s borders were sealed, forcing handpicked new arrivals to undergo mandatory quarantine in specialized hotels. “Everything was closed, there were no tourists or foreign students. Today, the measures adopted by these countries are much weaker than the ones we imposed on them, so it’s not that bad,” jokes a taxi driver.

“It’s revenge”

The profession has been especially affected by the “zero covid” policy, especially due to the reduction in air traffic. No direct flight from abroad has been able to land in Beijing since spring 2020, with the Chinese capital being considered a health bubble within a health bubble.

Except that with Omicron, the situation is no longer the same, thinks this 40-year-old pedestrian, who repeats word for word what the newspapers say. “It’s revenge, that’s obvious. China has better controlled the epidemic and the other countries are jealous. And then they are afraid of the variant in China. In any case, these measures are useless, because the virus is already everywhere. There are to analyze things scientifically,” he said.

Seeing things in a “scientific” way is also the argument of Chinese diplomacy. And paradoxically, it is the same argument that the Americans use to justify the measures. In response to Beijing’s criticism, US State Department spokesman Ned Price declared that “this is an approach based solely and exclusively on science.”