While China is seriously trying to get to terms with the end of the zero-Covid policies since the end of December 2022, international business has not been following suit, according to the Financial Times. International business delegations and other foreign visitors have not yet returned to Shanghai, writes the paper.Read More →

China claims that since the end of the disputed zero-Covid policies at the end of November 2022 till February 2023  200 million of its citizens have been diagnosed with Covid-19, writes AP. Of those, 800,000 critically ill patients have recovered, says the news agency in an article, based on notes from a meeting of the ruling Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee presided over by President and party leader Xi Jinping. The president claims Covid-19 has been effectively beaten.Read More →

Russian-born China digital marketing guru Ashley Dudarenok has been spending much of her recent professional life in Hong Kong. In December she swapped her Russian passport for a Hong Kong one and became a real Hongkonger. In the South China Morning Post, she explains why.Read More →

The exit of the Zero-Covid policy in China was not the cause of the rampant spread of the virus, or triggered by the protests, but was already spreading unstoppable for a longer time, according to the World Health Organization, writes Reuters. WHO’s emergency director Mike Ryan described the end of the zero-Covid policy as an unavoidable strategic decision on Wednesday 14 December.Read More →

One of China’s leading health experts, Zhong Nanshan, expects China to return to normal after Covid-19 halfway 2023, according to AFP. After the surprise turnaround in early December from the zero-Covid policy, the country is now bracing for a dramatic upsurge in patients, both under quarantine at home and in the hospitals because the Omicron variant is highly transmissible but less mortal, he told state media on Sunday 11 December.Read More →

China’s stringent zero-COVID policies are not able to contain the current omicron variant because of the highly infectious nature, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) in a press conference on Tuesday 17 May. But the WHO also added each country can make its own decisions, even when they do not make sense according to scientific evidence, reports AP.Read More →

By lack of a decent crystal ball, predicting how and when the current Covid-19 restrictions in China will end is tough. But the recent news that China is canceling planned international sporting events for June 2023, is certainly bad news.

Reuters reports half May 2022 the country is canceling the  2023 Asian Football Cup finals due to the COVID-19 situation in the country.Read More →

China’s leading paper, the People’s Daily, Xinhua News, and other state media confirmed the country will stick to its current stringent policies for fighting the COVID-19 virus, says the China Media Projects, and other media.Read More →

Just as the 2022 Olympic Winter Games in Beijing ended, China’s media started to suggest the country is planning beyond the strict zero-covid policies later in the year. International travel has been virtually dead since early 2020, and many – including the China Speakers Bureau – have been waiting for a change in this policy.Read More →

China has been successful in its zero-contamination strategy against Covid-19 domestically but will have to keep its borders closed as long as the virus is raving around in the rest of the world. Leading virus expert  Zhong Nanshan suggested this weekend in state-media border control might relax when 80 to 85 percent of the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens are vaccinated, expected at the end of this year and diverts from the current zero-transmission policy.Read More →