Beijing: People joined long queues outside immigration offices in Beijing on Monday, eager to renew their passports after China lifted COVID border controls that largely barred its 1.4 billion residents from traveling for three years was stopped from Sunday’s reopening is one of the final steps in China ending its “zero-COVID” regime, which began last month after historic protests that kept the virus at bay but caused widespread frustration among its people Was born
In a line of more than 100 people in China’s capital waiting to renew his passport, retiree Yang Jianguo, 67, told Reuters he plans to travel to the United States to see his daughter for the first time in three years. were making.
Yang stood beside his wife and said, “She got married last year, but the wedding ceremony had to be postponed because we couldn’t attend. We are very glad that we can go now.”
China’s currency and stock markets strengthened on Monday as investors bet the reopening could help reinvigorate the $17 trillion economy, which is suffering the slowest 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 upon returning.
But flights are scarce and many nations are demanding negative tests from visitors to China, seeking to contain an outbreak that has overwhelmed China’s many hospitals and cremation grounds. China also requires pre-departure negative COVID tests from passengers.
China’s top health officials and state media have repeatedly stated that nationwide COVID infections have peaked and they are downplaying the threat posed by the disease.
“Life is moving again!” the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, wrote in an editorial late on Sunday praising the government’s virus policies, saying that “preventing the infection” would lead to a “serious towards preventing disease”.
“Today, the virus is weak, we are strong.”
Officially, China has reported just 5,272 COVID-related deaths as of January 8, one of the lowest rates of death from the infection in the world.
But the World Health Organization has said China is underreporting the scale of the outbreak and international virus experts estimate that more than one million people could die from the disease in the country this year.