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World

Chinese rush to renew passports as COVID border curbs lifted

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  • China dropped quarantine for visitors on Sunday
  • Latest move in easing that has let virus run free
  • Several nations demand COVID tests from China travellers
  • Chinese stocks, yuan rally on growth hopes

BEIJING, Jan 9 (Reuters) – People joined long queues outside immigration offices in Beijing on Monday, eager to renew their passports after China dropped COVID border controls that had largely prevented its 1.4 billion residents from travelling for three years.

Sunday’s reopening is one of the last steps in China’s dismantling of its “zero-COVID” regime, which began last month after historic protests against curbs that kept the virus at bay but caused widespread frustration among its people.

Waiting to renew his passport in a line of more than 100 people in China’s capital, 67-year-old retiree Yang Jianguo told Reuters he was planning to travel to the United States to see his daughter for the first time in three years.

“She got married last year but had to postpone the wedding ceremony because we couldn’t go over to attend it. We’re very glad we can now go,” Yang said, standing alongside his wife.

China’s currency and stock markets strengthened on Monday, as investors bet the reopening could help reinvigorate a $17 trillion economy suffering its lowest growth in nearly half a century.

Beijing’s move to drop quarantine requirements for visitors is expected to boost outbound travel, as residents will not face those restrictions when they return.

But flights are scarce and several nations are demanding negative tests from visitors from China, seeking to contain an outbreak that is overwhelming many of China’s hospitals and crematoriums. China, too, requires pre-departure negative COVID tests from travellers.

China’s top health officials and state media have repeatedly said COVID infections are peaking across the country and they are playing down the threat now posed by the disease.

“Life is moving forward again!,” the official newspaper of the Communist Party, the People’s Daily, wrote in an editorial praising the government’s virus policies late on Sunday which it said had moved from “preventing infection” to “preventing severe disease”.

“Today, the virus is weak, we are stronger.”

Officially, China has reported just 5,272 COVID-related deaths as of Jan. 8, one of the lowest rates of death from the infection in the world.

But the World Health Organization has said China is under-reporting the scale of the outbreak and international virus experts estimate more than one million people in the country could die from the disease this year.

Shrugging off those gloomy forecasts, Asian shares climbed to a five-month high on Monday while China’s yuan firmed to its strongest level against the dollar since mid-August.

China’s blue-chip index (.CSI300) gained 0.7%, while the Shanghai Composite Index (.SSEC) rose 0.5% and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (.HSI) climbed 1.6%.

“The ending of the zero-COVID policy is … going to have a major positive impact on domestic spending,” Ralph Hamers, group chief executive officer at UBS, told the Swiss bank’s annual Greater China conference on Monday.

“We believe there is a lot of opportunity for those committed to investing in China.”

‘HUGE RELIEF’

“It’s a huge relief just to be able to go back to normal … just come back to China, get off the plane, get myself a taxi and just go home,” Michael Harrold, 61, a copy editor in Beijing told Reuters at Beijing Capital International Airport on Sunday after he arrived on a flight from Warsaw.

Harrold said he had been anticipating having to quarantine and do several rounds of testing on his return when he left for Europe for a Christmas break in early December.

State broadcaster CCTV reported on Sunday that direct flights from South Korea to China were close to sold out. The report quickly shot to the most-read item on Chinese social media site Weibo.

In the near term, a spike in demand from travellers will be hampered by the limited number of flights to and from China, which are currently at a small fraction of pre-COVID levels.

Flight Master data showed that on Sunday, China had a total of 245 international inbound and outbound flights, compared with 2,546 flights on the same day in 2019 – a fall of 91%.

Korean Air said earlier this month that it was halting a plan to increase flights to China due to Seoul’s cautious stance towards Chinese travellers. South Korea like many other countries now requires travellers from China, Macau and Hong Kong to provide negative COVID test results before departure.

Taiwan, which started testing arrivals from China on Jan. 1, said on Monday that nearly 20% of those tested so far were positive for COVID.

China’s domestic tourism revenue in 2023 is expected to recover to 70-75% of pre-COVID levels, but the number of inbound and outbound trips is forecast to recover to only 30-40% of pre-COVID levels this year, China News reported on Sunday.

Reporting by Yew Lun Tian, Liz Lee, Josh Arslan, Eduardo Baptista and Sophie Yu in Beijing; Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Writing by John Geddie; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

China reopens borders in final farewell to zero-COVID

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HONG KONG/BEIJING, Jan 8 (Reuters) – Travellers began streaming into mainland China by air, land and sea on Sunday, many eager for long-awaited reunions, as Beijing opened borders that have been all but shut since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

After three years, mainland China opened sea and land crossings with Hong Kong and ended a requirement for incoming travellers to quarantine, dismantling a final pillar of a zero-COVID policy that had shielded China’s people from the virus but also cut them off from the rest of the world.

China’s easing over the past month of one of the world’s tightest COVID regimes followed historic protests against a policy that included frequent testing, curbs on movement and mass lockdowns that heavily damaged the second-biggest economy.

Long queues formed at Hong Kong’s international airport for flights to mainland cities including Beijing, Tianjin and Xiamen and some Hong Kong media outlets estimated that thousands of people were travelling across.

“I’m so happy, so happy, so excited. I haven’t seen my parents for many years,” said Hong Kong resident Teresa Chow as she and dozens of other travellers prepared to cross into mainland China from Hong Kong’s Lok Ma Chau checkpoint early on Sunday.

“My parents are not in good health, and I couldn’t go back to see them even when they had colon cancer, so I’m really happy to go back and see them now,” she said, adding that she plans to head to her hometown in eastern China’s Ningbo city.

Investors hope the reopening will eventually reinvigorate a $17-trillion economy suffering its lowest growth in nearly half a century. But the abrupt policy reversal has triggered a massive wave of infections that is overwhelming some hospitals and causing business disruptions.

The border opening follows Saturday’s start of “chun yun”, the first 40-day period of Lunar New Year travel, which before the pandemic was the world’s largest annual migration of people returning to their hometowns of taking holidays with family.

Some 2 billion trips are expected to be made this season, nearly double last year’s movement and recovering to 70% of 2019 levels, the government says.

Many Chinese are also expected to start travelling abroad, a long-awaited shift for tourist spots in countries such as Thailand and Indonesia, though several governments – worried about China’s COVID spike – are imposing curbs on travellers from the country.

Travel will not quickly return to pre-pandemic levels due to such factors as a dearth of international flights, analysts say.

China on Sunday also resumed issuing passports and travel visas for mainland residents, and ordinary visas and residence permits for foreigners. Beijing has quotas on the number of people who can travel between Hong Kong and China each day.

VISITORS, HOMECOMINGS

At the Beijing Capital International Airport, families and friends exchanged emotional hugs and greetings with passengers arriving from Hong Kong, Warsaw and Frankfurt at the airport’s terminal 3, meetings at the arrival hall that would have been impossible just a day ago due to a now cancelled requirement for travellers from abroad to quarantine.

“I’ve been looking forward to the reopening for a long time. Finally we are reconnected with the world. I’m thrilled, I can’t believe it’s happening,” said a business woman surnamed Shen, 55, who flew in from Hong Kong.

Other people waiting at the airport included a group of females fans carrying long lens cameras in hope of catching a glimpse of South Korean boy band Tempest, the first idol group from South Korea to enter China in the past three years.

“It’s so good to see them in person! They are much more handsome and taller than I expected,” a 19-year-old who gave her name as Xiny told Reuters after chasing the seven-member boyband, who flew in from Seoul via the Chinese city of Dalian.

“With quarantine restrictions lifted, it’s going to be so much more convenient to fly over to see them, and for them to come to Beijing,” she said.

PROTESTS

Such scenes of reunions, however, jarred with others of protests in some cities around China over the weekend, in a reminder of how the economy remains under strain.

Protests are not rare in China, which has over the years seen people come out in large numbers over issues such as financial or property scams. But authorities have been on higher alert after widespread protests in Chinese cities and top universities at the end of November against COVID restrictions.

On Saturday, hundreds of Tesla (TSLA.O) owners gathered at the automaker’s showrooms and distribution centres in China to protest against its decision to slash prices for the second time in three months, a move it made to spur sales at a time of faltering demand in the world’s largest auto market.

(This story has been refiled to correct paragraph 9 to say 2 billion trips to be made, not 2 billion people to travel)

Reporting by Joyce Zhou in Hong Kong, Yew Lun Tian and Josh Arslan in Beijing; Writing by Brenda Goh in Shanghai; Editing by William Mallard

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

Travel curbs rack up as COVID-hit China readies reopening

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  • China to drop quarantine for overseas visitors on Sunday
  • Greece joins nations imposing travel curbs on China
  • Travel rush, holidays could inflame virus outbreak

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Jan 6 (Reuters) – More countries around the world are demanding that visitors from China take COVID tests, days before it drops border controls and ushers in an eagerly awaited return to travel for a population that has been largely stuck at home for three years.

From Sunday, China will end the requirement for inbound travellers to quarantine, the latest dismantling of its “zero-COVID” regime that began last month following historic protests against a suffocating series of mass lockdowns.

But the abrupt changes have exposed many of China’s 1.4 billion population to the virus for the first time, triggering an infection wave that is overwhelming some hospitals, emptying pharmacy shelves of medication and causing international alarm.

Greece, Germany and Sweden on Thursday joined more than a dozen countries to demand COVID tests from Chinese travellers, as the World Health Organisation said China’s official virus data was under-reporting the true extent of its outbreak.

Chinese officials and state media have struck a defiant tone, defending the handling of the outbreak, playing down the severity of the surge and denouncing foreign travel requirements for its residents.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning warned on Friday of possible reciprocal measures after the European Union recommended pre-departure testing for Chinese passengers.

“The EU should listen more to … rational voices and treat China’s epidemic prevention and control objectively and fairly,” Mao told a regular media briefing in Beijing.

The Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid published by the official People’s Daily, said in an editorial that some Western media and politicians “would never be satisfied” no matter what steps China takes.

The global aviation industry, battered by years of pandemic curbs, has also been critical of the decisions to impose testing on travellers from China. China will still require pre-departure testing for inbound travellers after Jan. 8.

HOSPITALS PACKED

Some Chinese citizens think the reopening has been too hasty.

“They should have taken a series of actions before opening up … and at the very least ensure that the pharmacies were well stocked,” a 70-year-old man who gave his surname as Zhao told Reuters in Shanghai.

China reported five new COVID deaths in the mainland for Thursday, bringing its official virus death toll to 5,264, one of the lowest in the world.

But that appeared to be at odds with the reality on the ground where funeral parlours are overwhelmed and hospitals are packed with elderly patients on respirators. In Shanghai, more than 200 taxi drivers are driving ambulances to meet demand for emergency services, the Shanghai Morning Post reported.

International health experts believe Beijing’s narrow definition of COVID deaths does not reflect a true toll that could rise to more than a million fatalities this year.

Investors are optimistic that China’s reopening can eventually reinvigorate a $17-trillion economy suffering its lowest growth in nearly half a century.

Those hopes, alongside policy measures to help revive its troubled property sector, lifted China’s yuan on Friday.

Meanwhile, both China’s blue-chip CSI300 Index (.CSI300) and the Shanghai Composite Index (.SSEC) have gained more than 2% in the first trading week of the year.

“While the re-opening is likely to be a bumpy affair amid surging COVID-19 cases and increasingly stretched health systems, our economists expect growth momentum across Asia to gather steam, led by China,” Herald van der Linde, HSBC’s head of equity strategy, Asia Pacific, said in a note.

SOUTHEAST ASIA OPEN

With the big Lunar New Year holidays late this month, the mainland is also set to open the border with its special administrative region of Hong Kong on Sunday, for the first time in three years.

Ferry services between the city and the gambling hub of Macau will resume on the same day.

Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways (0293.HK) said on Thursday it would more than double flights to mainland China. Flights to and from China remain at a tiny fraction of pre-COVID levels.

The WHO has warned that the holiday, which starts on Jan. 21 and usually brings the biggest human migration on the planet as people head home from cities to visit families in small towns and villages, could spark another infection wave in the absence of higher vaccination rates and other precautions.

Authorities expect 2.1 billion passenger trips, by road, rail, water and air, over the holiday, double last year’s 1.05 billion journeys during the same period.

The transport ministry has urged people to be cautious to minimise the risk of infection for elderly relatives, pregnant women and infants.

One region poised to be a major beneficiary of China’s opening is Southeast Asia, where countries have not demanded that Chinese visitors take COVID tests.

Except for airline wastewater testing by Malaysia and Thailand for the virus, the region’s 11 nations will treat Chinese travellers like any others.

As many as 76% of Chinese travel agencies ranked Southeast Asia as the top destination when outbound travel resumed, according to a recent survey by trade show ITB China.

Many people in China have taken to social media to announce their travel plans but some remain wary.

“You want to see the world, but the world might not want to see you,” wrote one WeChat user from Tianjin city.

Reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Bernard Orr, Eduardo Baptista, Martin Pollard and Liz Lee in Beijing, Farah Master in Hong Kong, and Xinghui Kok in Singapore; Writing by John Geddie and Greg Torode; Editing by Robert Birsel and Andrew Heavens

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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World

China defends its COVID response after WHO, Biden concerns

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  • China says outbreak is controllable
  • WHO says China under-reporting hospital admissions, deaths
  • Official data at odds with packed hospitals, crematoriums
  • Asian shares up on hopes China reopening stimulates growth

BEIJING/SHANGHAI, Jan 5 (Reuters) – China defended on Thursday its handling of its raging COVID-19 outbreak after U.S. President Joe Biden voiced concern and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said Beijing was under-reporting virus deaths.

The WHO’s emergencies director, Mike Ryan, said on Wednesday in some of the U.N. health agency’s most critical remarks to date, that Chinese officials were under-representing data on several fronts.

China scrapped its stringent COVID controls last month after protests against them, abandoning a policy that had shielded its 1.4 billion population from the virus for three years.

China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a regular press briefing in Beijing that China had transparently and quickly shared COVID data with the WHO.

Mao said that China’s “epidemic situation is controllable” and that it hoped the WHO would “uphold a scientific, objective, and impartial position”.

“Facts have proved that China has always, in accordance with the principles of legality, timeliness, openness and transparency, maintained close communication and shared relevant information and data with the WHO in a timely manner,” Mao said.

China reported one new COVID death in the mainland for Wednesday, compared with five a day earlier, bringing its official death toll to 5,259.

Ryan said on Wednesday the numbers China was publishing under-represented hospital admissions, intensive care unit patients and deaths.

Hours later, U.S. President Joe Biden also raised concern about China’s handling of a COVID outbreak that is filling hospitals and overwhelming some funeral homes.

“They’re very sensitive … when we suggest they haven’t been that forthcoming,” Biden told reporters while on a visit to Kentucky.

The French health minister voiced similar fears while German Health Minister Karl Lauterbach voiced concern about a new COVID subvariant linked to growing hospitalisations in the northeastern United States.

CROWDED HOSPITAL

The United States is one of more than a dozen countries that have imposed restrictions on travellers from China.

China has criticised such border controls as unreasonable and unscientific and the government said on Thursday that its border with its special administrative region of Hong Kong would also reopen on Sunday, for the first time in three years.

Millions of people will be travelling within China later this month for the Lunar New Year holiday.

China’s government has played down the severity of the situation in recent days and the state-run Global Times said in an article on Wednesday that COVID had peaked in several cities including the capital, Beijing, citing interviews with doctors.

But at a hospital in Shanghai’s suburban Qingpu district, patients on beds lined the corridors of the emergency treatment area and main lobby on Thursday, most of them elderly and several breathing with oxygen tanks, a Reuters witness said.

A notice on a board advised that patients would have to wait an average of five hours to be seen.

Staff declared one elderly patient dead and pinned a note to the body on the floor stating the cause of death “respiratory failure”.

Police patrolled outside a nearby crematorium, where a stream of mourners carried wreathes and waited to collect the ashes of loved ones.

DATA GAPS

With one of the lowest official COVID death tolls in the world, China has been routinely accused of under-reporting for political reasons.

In December last year, the WHO said it had received no data from China on new COVID hospitalisations since Beijing lifted its zero-COVID policy.

In its latest weekly report, the WHO said China reported 218,019 new weekly COVID cases as of Jan. 1, adding that gaps in data might be due to authorities simply struggling to tally cases.

The methods for counting COVID deaths have varied across countries since the pandemic first erupted in the central Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

Chinese health officials have said only deaths caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure in patients who had the virus are classified as COVID deaths.

But disease experts outside China have said its approach would miss several other widely recognised types of fatal COVID complications, from blood clots to heart attacks as well as sepsis and kidney failure.

International health experts predict at least 1 million COVID-related deaths in China this year without urgent action. British-based health data firm Airfinity has estimated about 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from COVID.

Surging COVID infections are hurting demand in China’s $17 trillion economy, with a private-sector survey on Thursday showing services activity shrank in December.

But investors remain optimistic that China’s dismantling of COVID controls will eventually help revive growth that has slid to its lowest rate in nearly half a century. Those hopes were seen lifting Asian equity markets (.MIAPJ0000PUS) on Thursday.

“China reopening has a big impact … worldwide,” said Joanne Goh, an investment strategist at DBS Bank in Singapore, adding the move would spur tourism and consumption and ease supply-chain crunches seen last year.

(This story has been refiled to correct punctuation in headline.)

Reporting by Liz Lee, Eduardo Baptista and Bernard Orr in Beijing, Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Tom Westbrook in Singapore, Steve Holland in Hebron, Kentucky; Writing by John Geddie and Greg Torode; Editing by Robert Birsel

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Business

Dollar set for biggest one-day gain in three months, equities rally

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  • Global shares edge up
  • Correlation with dollar softens
  • Yen takes a breather from recent rally

LONDON, Jan 3 (Reuters) – The dollar headed for its largest one-day rise in over three months on Tuesday, while equities rallied in a macro-packed week that could offer a steer on when, and at what level, U.S. interest rates might peak.

The MSCI All-World index (.MIWD00000PUS) was roughly unchanged, although European stocks, led by hefty gains in anything from financials, to oil and gas stocks, to healthcare, bounced to two-week highs.

Typically, stocks tend to fall when the dollar gains, but that negative correlation between the two softened on Tuesday to its weakest since early September. The dollar index was last up 1% at 104.69.

The euro was the worst-performing currency against the dollar , falling by the most since late September, after German regional inflation data showed consumer price pressures eased sharply in December, thanks in large part to government measures to contain natural gas bills for households and businesses.

Data on U.S. payrolls this week are expected to show the labour market remains tight, while EU consumer prices could show some slowdown in inflation as energy prices ease.

“Energy base effects will bring about a sizeable reduction in inflation in the major economies in 2023, but stickiness in core components, much of this stemming from tight labour markets, will prevent an early dovish policy ‘pivot’ by central banks,” analysts at NatWest Markets wrote in a note.

They expect interest rates to top out at 5% in the United States, 2.25% in the EU and 4.5% in Britain and to stay there for the entire year. Markets, on the other hand, are pricing in rate cuts for late 2023, with fed fund futures implying a range of 4.25 to 4.5% by December.

“The thing that makes me nervous about this year is that we still do not know the full impact of the very significant monetary tightening that’s taken place across the advanced world,” Berenberg senior economist Kallum Pickering said.

“It takes a good year, or 18 months, for the full effect to kick in,” he said.

Central banks have expressed concern about rising wages, even as consumers have struggled to keep up with the soaring cost of living and companies are running out of room to protect their profitability by raising their own prices.

But, Pickering said, the labour market tends to lag the broader economy by some time, meaning that there is a risk that central banks could be raising interest rates by more than the economy can withstand.

“What central banks are inducing is essentially excess cyclicality, which is – they overstimulated in 2021 and triggered an inflationary boom and then overtightened in 2022 and triggered a disinflationary recession. It’s exactly the opposite of what you want central banks to do,” he said.

Investors will get their first insight into central bank thinking later this week when the Federal Reserve releases the minutes from its December policy meeting.

The minutes will likely show many members saw risks that interest rates would need to go higher for longer, but investors are conscious of how much they’ve risen already.

On the markets, European shares rose thanks to gains in classic defensive sectors, such as healthcare and food and beverages. Drugmakers Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO), Astrazeneca (AZN.L) and Roche (ROG.S) were among the biggest positive weights on the STOXX 600 (.STOXX), along with Nestle (NESN.S)

The STOXX, which lost 13% in 2022, rose 1.1%. The FTSE 100 (.FTSE), the only major European index not to trade on Monday, rose 1.3%.

U.S. stock index futures gained between 0.4-0.5% , , pointing to an upbeat start at the opening bell.

Markets have for a while priced in an eventual U.S. easing, but they were badly wrong-footed by the Bank of Japan’s shock upward shift in its ceiling for bond yields.

The BOJ is now considering raising its inflation forecasts in January to show price growth close to its 2% target in fiscal 2023 and 2024, according to the Nikkei.

Such a move at its next policy meeting on Jan. 17-18 would only add to speculation of an end to ultra-loose policy, which has essentially acted as a floor for bond yields globally.

The policy shift has boosted the yen across the board, with the dollar losing 5% in December and the euro 2.3%.

The yen took a breather on Tuesday, easing 0.3% against the dollar to 130.96. The dollar earlier touched a six-month low of 129.52 yen . Against the dollar, the euro fell 1.1% to $1.05395, having dropped by as much as 1.4% earlier in the day.

“A theme we’ve often noticed is the euro’s negative seasonality in January, down around 1.3% since 1980 on average in January, with a 64% hit ratio. If history is any guide, it’s a rough month for euro longs,” Nomura strategist Jordan Rochester said.

Oil succumbed to the strength of the dollar, and reversed course, falling as concern about demand in China, the world’s second largest economy, added to the downward momentum.

A batch of surveys have shownChina’s factory activity shrank at the sharpest pace in nearly three years as COVID infections swept through production lines.

“China is entering the most dangerous weeks of the pandemic,” warned analysts at Capital Economics.

Brent crude lost 0.9% to trade around $85.15 a barrel, having hit a session high of $87.00 earlier on.

Reporting by Wayne Cole; Editing by Bradley Perrett, Sam Holmes and Chizu Nomiyama

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World

China state media plays down COVID wave severity before WHO meet

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  • State media says severe illness from COVID is rare
  • Chinese scientists expected to brief WHO
  • China factory activity shrinks in December

BEIJING, Jan 3 (Reuters) – China’s state media played down the severity on Tuesday of the COVID-19 wave surging over the country, with its scientists expected to give a briefing to the World Health Organization on the evolution of the virus later in the day.

China’s abrupt U-turn on COVID controls on Dec. 7, as well as the accuracy of its case and mortality data, have come under increasing scrutiny at home and overseas and prompted some countries to impose travel curbs.

The policy shift followed protests over the “zero COVID” approach championed by President Xi Jinping, marking the strongest show of public defiance in his decade-old presidency and coinciding with the slowest growth in China in nearly half a century.

As the virus spreads unchecked, funeral parlours report a spike in demand for their services and international health experts predict at least one million deaths in the world’s most populous country this year.

China reported three new COVID deaths for Monday, up from one for Sunday. Its official death toll since the pandemic began now stands at 5,253.

In an article on Tuesday, People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, cited several Chinese experts as saying the illness caused by the virus was relatively mild for most people.

“Severe and critical illnesses account for 3% to 4% of infected patients currently admitted to designated hospitals in Beijing,” Tong Zhaohui, Vice President of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, told the newspaper.

Kang Yan, head of West China Tianfu Hospital of Sichuan University, said that in the past three weeks, a total of 46 critically ill patients have been admitted to intensive care units, accounting for about 1% of symptomatic infections.

More than 80% of those living in the southwestern Sichuan province have been infected, local health authorities said.

The World Health Organization on Friday urged China’s health officials to regularly share specific and real-time information on the COVID situation.

The agency has invited Chinese scientists to present detailed data on viral sequencing at a meeting of a technical advisory group scheduled for Tuesday. It has also asked China to share data on hospitalizations, deaths and vaccinations.

The European Union has offered free COVID vaccines to China to help contain the outbreak, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

EU government health officials will hold talks on Wednesday on a coordinated response to China’s outbreak, the Swedish EU presidency said on Monday.

The United States, France, Australia, India and others will require mandatory COVID tests on travellers from China, while Belgium said it will test wastewater from planes from China for new COVID variants.

China has rejected criticism of its COVID data and said any new mutations may be more infectious but less harmful.

“According to the political logic of some people in Europe and the United States, whether China opens or does not open is equally the wrong thing to do,” state-run CCTV said in a commentary late on Monday.

ECONOMIC CONCERNS

As Chinese workers and shoppers are falling ill, concerns mount about growth prospects in the world’s second-largest economy, weighing on Asian stocks.

Data on Tuesday showed China’s factory activity shrank at a sharper pace in December as the COVID wave disrupted production and hurt demand.

December shipments from Foxconn’s (2317.TW) Zhengzhou iPhone plant, disrupted late last year by a COVID outbreak that prompted worker departures and unrest, were 90% of the firm’s initial plans, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said.

A “bushfire” of infections in China in coming months is likely to hurt its economy this year and drag on global growth, said the head of the International Monetary Fund, Kristalina Georgieva.

“China is entering the most dangerous weeks of the pandemic,” warned analysts at Capital Economics.

“The authorities are making almost no efforts now to slow the spread of infections and, with the migration ahead of Lunar New Year getting started, any parts of the country not currently in a major COVID wave will be soon.”

Mobility data suggested that economic activity was depressed nationwide and would likely remain so until the infection wave began to subside, they added.

China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said the domestic tourism market saw 52.71 million trips during the New Year holiday, flat year-on-year and only 43% of the 2019 levels, before the pandemic.

The revenue generated was over 26.52 billion yuan ($3.84 billion), up 4% year-on-year but only about 35% of the revenue created in 2019, the ministry said.

Expectations are higher for China’s biggest holiday, the Lunar New Year, later this month, when some experts expect daily COVID cases to have already peaked in many parts of the country. Some hotels in the southern tourist resort of Sanya are fully booked for the period, Chinese media reported.

Reporting by Beijing and Shanghai bureaus; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan

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World

The New Year rings in as Asia then Europe usher out 2022

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Dec 31 (Reuters) – With fireworks planned in Paris, hopes for an end to war in Kyiv, and a return to post-COVID normality in Australia and China, Europe and Asia bid farewell to 2022.

It was a year marked for many by the conflict in Ukraine, economic stresses and the effects of global warming. But it was also a year that saw a dramatic soccer World Cup, rapid technological change, and efforts to meet climate challenges.

For Ukraine, there seemed to be no end in sight to the fighting that began when Russia invaded in February. On Saturday alone, Russia fired more than 20 cruise missiles, Ukrainian officials said, with explosions reported throughout the country.

Evening curfews remained in place nationwide, making the celebration of the beginning of 2023 impossible in many public spaces. Several regional governors posted messages on social media warning residents not to break restrictions on New Year’s Eve.

In Kyiv, though, people gathered near the city’s central Christmas tree as midnight approached.

“We are not giving up. They couldn’t ruin our celebrations,” said 36-year-old Yaryna, celebrating with her husband, tinsel and fairy lights wrapped around her.

Oksana Mozorenko, 35, said her family had tried to celebrate Christmas to make it “a real holiday” but added: “I would really like this year to be over.”

In a video message to mark the New Year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Time Magazine’s 2022 Person of the Year, said: “I want to wish all of us one thing – victory.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin devoted his New Year’s address to rallying the Russian people behind his troops fighting in Ukraine.

Festivities in Moscow were muted, without the usual fireworks on Red Square.

“One should not pretend that nothing is happening – our people are dying (in Ukraine),” said 68-year-old Yelena Popova. “A holiday is being celebrated, but there must be limits.” Many Muscovites said they hoped for peace in 2023.

Paris was set to stage its first New Year fireworks since 2019, with 500,000 people expected to gather on the Champs-Elysees avenue to watch.

Like many places, the Czech capital Prague was feeling the pinch economically and so did not hold a fireworks display.

“Holding celebrations did not seem appropriate,” said city hall spokesman Vit Hofman, citing “the unfavourable economic situation of many Prague households” and the need for the city to save money.

Heavy rain and high winds meant firework shows in the Netherlands’ main cities were cancelled.

But several European cities were experiencing record warmth for the time of year. The Czech Hydrometeorological Institute said it was seeing the warmest New Year’s Eve on record, with the temperature in Prague’s centre, where records go back 247 years, reaching 17.7 Celsius (63.9 Fahrenheit).

It was also the warmest New Year’s Eve ever recorded in France, official weather forecaster Meteo France said.

[1/7] People gather on the Champs Elysees avenue during the New Year’s Eve celebrations near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, France, December 31, 2022. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier

In Croatia, dozens of cities, including the capital Zagreb, cancelled fireworks displays after pet lovers warned about their damaging effects, calling for more environmentally aware celebrations.

The Adriatic town of Rovinj planned to replace fireworks with laser shows and Zagreb was putting on confetti, visual effects and music.

‘SYDNEY IS BACK’

Earlier, Australia kicked off the celebrations with its first restriction-free New Year’s Eve after two years of COVID disruptions.

Sydney welcomed the New Year with a typically dazzling fireworks display, which for the first time featured a rainbow waterfall off the Harbour Bridge.

“This New Year’s Eve we are saying Sydney is back as we kick off festivities around the world and bring in the New Year with a bang,” said Clover Moore, lord mayor of the city.

Pandemic-era curbs on celebrations were lifted this year after Australia, like many countries around the world, re-opened its borders and removed social distancing restrictions.

In China, rigorous COVID restrictions were lifted only in December as the government reversed its “zero-COVID” policy, a switch that has led to soaring infections and meant some people were in no mood to celebrate.

“This virus should just go and die, cannot believe this year I cannot even find a healthy friend that can go out with me and celebrate the passage into the New Year,” wrote one social media user based in eastern Shandong province.

But in the city of Wuhan, where the pandemic began three years ago, tens of thousands of people gathered to enjoy themselves despite a heavy security presence.

Barricades were erected and hundreds of police officers stood guard. Officers shuttled people away from at least one popular New Year’s Eve gathering point and used loudspeakers to blast out a message on a loop advising people not to gather. But the large crowds of revellers took no notice.

In Shanghai, many thronged the historic riverside walkway, the Bund.

“We’ve all travelled in from Chengdu to celebrate in Shanghai,” said Da Dai, a 28-year-old digital media executive who was visiting with two friends. “We’ve already had COVID, so now feel it’s safe to enjoy ourselves.”

In Hong Kong, days after limits were lifted on group gatherings, tens of thousands of people met near the city’s Victoria Harbour for a countdown to midnight. Lights beamed from some of the biggest harbour-front buildings.

It was the city’s biggest New Year’s Eve celebration in several years. The event was cancelled in 2019 due to often violent social unrest, then scaled down in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.

Malaysia’s government cancelled its New Year countdown and fireworks event at Dataran Merdeka in Kuala Lumpur after flooding across the nation displaced tens of thousands of people and a landslide killed 31 people this month.

Celebrations at the capital’s Petronas Twin Towers were pared back with no performances or fireworks.

Reuters 2022 Year in Review

Reporting by Reuters bureaux around the world; Writing by Neil Fullick, Frances Kerry and Rosalba O’Brien; Editing by Hugh Lawson, David Holmes and Daniel Wallis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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COVID travel curbs against Chinese visitors ‘discriminatory’ -state media

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  • U.S., Japan, others require COVID tests from Chinese visitors
  • China state media calls COVID travel curbs “discriminatory”
  • China’s factory activity likely cooled in December -poll

BEIJING, Dec 30 (Reuters) – Chinese state-media said COVID-19 testing requirements imposed around the world in response to a surging wave of infections were “discriminatory”, in the clearest pushback yet against restrictions that are slowing down its re-opening.

Having kept its borders all but shut for three years, imposing a strict regime of lockdowns and relentless testing, China abruptly reversed course toward living with the virus on Dec. 7, and a wave of infections erupted across the country.

Some places have been taken aback by the scale of China’s outbreak and expressed scepticism over Beijing’s COVID statistics, with the United States, South Korea, India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan imposing COVID tests for travellers from China.

Malaysia said it would screen all international arrivals for fever.

“The real intention is to sabotage China’s three years of COVID-19 control efforts and attack the country’s system,” state-run tabloid Global Times said in an article late on Thursday, calling the restrictions “unfounded” and “discriminatory.”

China will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8. But it will still demand a negative PCR test result within 48 hours before departure.

Italy on Thursday urged the rest of the European Union to follow its lead, but France, Germany and Portugal have said they saw no need for new restrictions, while Austria has stressed the economic benefits of Chinese tourists’ return to Europe.

Global spending by Chinese visitors was worth more than $250 billion a year before the pandemic.

The United States have raised concerns about potential mutations of the virus as it sweeps through the world’s most populous country, as well as over China’s data transparency.

The U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention is considering sampling wastewater from international aircraft to track any emerging new variants, the agency told Reuters.

China, a country of 1.4 billion people, reported one new COVID death for Thursday, same as the day before – numbers which do not match the experience of other countries after they re-opened.

China’s official death toll of 5,247 since the pandemic began compares with more than 1 million deaths in the United States. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million, has reported more than 11,000 deaths.

UK-based health data firm Airfinity said on Thursday around 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from COVID. Cumulative deaths in China since Dec. 1 have likely reached 100,000, with infections totalling 18.6 million, it said.

‘EXCESS MORTALITY’

China’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou said on Thursday that a team at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention will measure the difference between the number of deaths in the current wave of infections and the number of deaths expected had the epidemic never happened. By calculating the “excess mortality”, China will be able to work out what could have been potentially underestimated, Wu said.

China has said it only counts deaths of COVID patients caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as COVID-related.

The relatively low death count is also inconsistent with the surging demand reported by funeral parlours in several Chinese cities.

The lifting of restrictions, after widespread protests against them in November, has overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes across the country, with scenes of people on intravenous drips by the roadside and lines of hearses outside crematoria fuelling public concern.

Health experts say China has been caught ill-prepared by the U-turn in policies long championed by President Xi Jinping.

In December, tenders put out by hospitals for key equipment such as ventilators and patient monitors were two to three times higher than in previous months, according to a Reuters review，suggesting hospitals were scrambling to plug shortages.

Experts say the elderly in rural areas may be particularly vulnerable because of inadequate medical resources. Next month’s Lunar New Year festival, when hundreds of millions travel to their hometowns, will add to the risk.

ECONOMIC WOES

The world’s second-largest economy is expected to slow down further in the near term as factory workers and shoppers fall ill. Some economists predict a strong bounce back from a low base next year, but concerns linger that some of the damage made by three years of restrictions could be long-term.

Consumers may need time to recover their confidence and spending appetite after losing income during lockdowns, while the private sector may have used its expansion funds to cover losses incurred due to the restrictions.

Heavily indebted China will also face slowing demand in its main export markets, while its massive property sector is licking its wounds after a series of defaults.

China’s factory activity most likely cooled in December as rising infections began to affect production lines, a Reuters poll showed on Friday.

Chinese airlines, however, look set to be the early winners of the re-opening.

Writing by Marius Zaharia. Editing by Gerry Doyle

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Hong Kong asks Japan to drop airport bans, 60,000 travellers affected

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HONG KONG, Dec 29 (Reuters) – Hong Kong has asked Japan to withdraw a COVID-19 restriction that allows passenger flights from the financial hub to land only at four designated airports, saying the decision would affect about 60,000 passengers.

India, Italy, Taiwan and the United States require mandatory COVID-19 tests on travellers from China after Beijing’s decision last month to lift stringent zero-COVID policies that fuelled a surge in infections across mainland China.

Hong Kong, home to more than 7 million people, is recording around 20,000 coronavirus cases a day but lifted its COVID curbs on Thursday for the first time in three years.

Japan, a top travel destination for those in Hong Kong, said it would limit flights from Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China to Tokyo’s two airports, as well as Osaka and Nagoya, from Friday.

The decision comes during a peak travel season ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday which begins on Jan. 21.

“It is understood that around 250 outbound flights of Hong Kong airlines will be affected between December 30, 2022 and the end of January 2023, affecting around 60,000 passengers,” the government said in a statement late on Wednesday.

City leader John Lee said the government had indicated to Japan that it was disappointed.

“We think that Hong Kong people should be allowed to use not just these four airports,” Lee said.

On Thursday, Hong Kong’s government said Japan would let passenger flights from Hong Kong also land in Hokkaido, Fukuoka and Okinawa provided that no passengers aboard had been in mainland China for the prior seven days, but said the condition was “unreasonable”.

Flights of Hong Kong airlines can still carry passengers back to Hong Kong from airports in Japan, the government said, to ensure their smooth return and “minimise the impact to Hong Kong travellers caused by the incident.”

In a statement, Hong Kong’s flagship carrier Cathay Pacific Airways (0293.HK) said it would continue to operate flights to Japan, although it would reduce these to 65 a week, down 20% from its planned schedule for Jan 2023.

HK Express, which is owned by Cathay, said in a separate statement it would only be able to operate 60 scheduled flights a week to destinations in Japan due to the curbs, prompting the cancellation of 41 flights from Hong Kong to Japan in January.

Hong Kong Airlines and Peach Aviation said they would cancel some flight routes because of the rules.

In December, China began dismantling the world’s strictest COVID regime of lockdowns and extensive testing, putting its battered economy on course for a complete re-opening next year.

The lifting of curbs following widespread protests has meant that COVID is spreading largely unchecked, probably infecting millions of people each day, some international health experts have said.

Reporting by Farah Master and Twinnie Siu; Editing by Lincoln Feast and Stephen Coates

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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China’s vast countryside in rush to bolster COVID defences

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  • Hospitals, funeral parlours overwhelmed by COVID wave
  • Some countries impose testing rules on Chinese travellers
  • China reports one new COVID death for Dec. 28

SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Dec 29 (Reuters) – China’s sprawling and thinly resourced countryside is racing to beef up medical facilities before hundreds of millions of factory workers return to their families for the Lunar New Year holiday next month from cities where COVID-19 is surging.

Having imposed the world’s strictest COVID regime of lockdowns and relentless testing for three years, China reversed course this month towards living with the virus, leaving its fragile health system overwhelmed.

The lifting of restrictions, following widespread protests against them, means COVID is spreading largely unchecked and likely infecting millions of people a day, according to some international health experts.

China officially reported one new COVID death for Wednesday, down from three on Tuesday, but foreign governments and many epidemiologists believe the numbers are much higher, and that more than 1 million people may die next year.

China has said it only counts deaths of COVID patients caused by pneumonia and respiratory failure as COVID-related.

In the southwestern city of Chengdu, funeral parlours were busy after dark on Wednesday, with a steady stream of cars entering one, which was heavily guarded by security personnel.

One van driver working for the parlour said the past few weeks have been particularly busy and that “huge numbers of people” were inside.

Hospitals and funeral homes in major cities have been under intense pressure, but the main concern over the health system’s ability to cope with surging infections is focused on the countryside.

At a Shanghai pharmacy, Wang Kaiyun, 53, a cleaner in the city who comes from the neighbouring Anhui province, said she was buying medicines for her family back home.

“My husband, my son, my grandson, my mother, they are all infected,” she said. “They can’t get any medicine, nothing for fever or cough.”

Each year, hundreds of millions of people, mostly working in factories near the southern and eastern coasts, return to the countryside for the Lunar New Year, due to start on Jan. 22.

The holiday travel rush is expected to last for 40 days, from Jan. 7 to Feb. 15, authorities said.

The state-run China Daily reported on Thursday that rural regions across China were beefing up their medical treatment capacities.

It said a hospital in a rural part of Inner Mongolia where more than 100,000 people live was seeking bidders for a 1.9 million yuan ($272,308) contract to upgrade its wards into intensive care units.

Liancheng County Central Hospital in the eastern Fujian province was seeking tenders for ambulances and medical devices, ranging from breathing machines to electrocardiogram monitors.

In December, tenders put out by hospitals for key medical equipment were two-to-three times higher than in previous months, according to a Reuters review，suggesting hospitals across the country were scrambling to plug shortages.

TESTING REQUIREMENTS

The world’s second-largest economy is expected to suffer a slowdown in factory output and domestic consumption in the near term as workers and shoppers fall ill.

The contact-intensive services sector, which accounts for roughly half of China’s economic output, was hammered by the country’s anti-virus curbs, which shut down many restaurants and restricted travel. As China re-opens, many businesses in the services industry have no money to expand.

The re-opening also raises the prospect of Chinese tourists returning to shopping streets around the world, once a market worth $255 billion a year globally. But some countries have been taken aback by the scale of the outbreak and are sceptical of Beijing’s COVID statistics.

China’s official death toll of 5,246 since the pandemic began compares with more than 1 million deaths in the United States. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong has reported more than 11,000 deaths.

The United States, India, Italy, Japan and Taiwan said they would require COVID tests for travellers from China. Britain was considering a similar move, the Telegraph reported.

The United States issued a travel alert on Wednesday advising Americans to “reconsider travel to China, Hong Kong, and Macau” and citing “reports that the healthcare system is overwhelmed” along with the risk of new variants.

The main airport in the Italian city of Milan started testing passengers arriving from Beijing and Shanghai on Dec. 26 and found that almost half of them were infected.

China has rejected criticism of its statistics as groundless and politically motivated attempts to smear its policies. It has also played down the risk of new variants, saying it expects mutations to be more virulent but less severe.

Omicron was still the dominant strain in China, Chinese health officials said this week.

Australia, Germany, Thailand and others said they would not impose additional restrictions on travel for now.

For its part, China, whose borders have been all but shut to foreigners since early 2020, will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from Jan. 8.

($1 = 6.9774 yuan)

Additional reporting by Martin Quin Pollard in Chengdu; Writing by Marius Zaharia; Editing by Lincoln Feast, Robert Birsel

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