Authorities of Beijing Municipality announced plans to resume international flights from some countries directly to one of Beijing’s two international airports. Since March 23, flights with destination Beijing were diverted to other cities, such as Xian and Qingdao, were passengers were required to disembark, pass several Covid-19 tests and stay 14 days in quarantine, before boarding flights to their final destination of Beijing. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) announced that in a first batch, direct flights from eight countries would be welcomed: Thailand, Cambodia, Pakistan, Greece, Denmark, Austria, Sweden and Canada. The first direct international flight to Beijing departed from Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, on September 3 and was operated by Air China.

“Resuming direct international flight signals that China has gotten domestic Covid-19 outbreaks under control. Though there have been small-scale resurgences, they all have been quickly contained and eradicated,” Zeng Guang, former Chief Epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Global Times. The latest outbreak of Covid-19 cases in Beijing ended on July 20 and the city has reported no new case for more than a month. It does not mean, however, that Beijing – or other cities in the country – could relax their prevention and control measures, as China has been seeing growing numbers of imported cases in recent months, according to some experts.

Passengers arriving in Beijing from overseas need to be quarantined for 14 days and take nucleic acid tests twice. Ditan Hospital in Beijing was designated for treatment of those who test positive. In order to control the cross-border spread of the global pandemic, the CAAC said that it would impose stricter anti-Covid-19 prevention measures based on the existing “circuit breaker” mechanism. The regulator stressed that if three or more confirmed cases are found on an international flight into Beijing, the flight will be re-directed to another Chinese city. During trial operations, direct international flights to Beijing will have a passenger cap of around 500 each day in the beginning and this will be gradually raised to 1,000 after a test run. The total number of arriving flights should be no more than five daily. The passengers should be citizens of those foreign countries or Chinese people who are traveling back from those countries. People from third countries are not allowed to the direct flights. Beijing residents returning from those countries via direct flights will need to have another 7-day health monitoring period at home after the 14-day quarantine, said Tian Tao, responsible for community epidemic control in the city’s anti-virus work group.

“If we want to become a metropolis with a certain role and influence in the world, we must restore international communication. The flight resumption also shows that Beijing is back on track,” Sheng Guangyao, Research Fellow at the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies of the China Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times. “We need to strike a balance between normalizing epidemic prevention and moving on,” said Sheng.

Wuhan, in Hubei province, will resume international flights in mid-September after a seven-month suspension, officials said. Several foreign carriers have applied to restart flights linking Wuhan to Seoul, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Hanoi, Sihanoukville, Tokyo, Jakarta and Singapore. The number of international flights operated by Chinese airlines is still only 10% of the number in the same period last year. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said that global passenger demand in July (measured in revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs), continued to be critically low – 79.8% below July 2019 levels. Chinese carriers’ traffic was down 28.4% compared to July 2019.

Frontline aviation personnel will be among the first to be vaccinated, the CAAC said, but emergency vaccine use will only be given to volunteers aged 18 to 59. It has not been announced which vaccine they will receive. China National Biotec Group (CNBG) and Sinovac Biotech presented their Covid-19 vaccines at the opening ceremony of the CIFTIS services exhibition. Sinovac’s designed production capacity for the vaccine is 300 million doses annually. It takes 40 days for the company to produce one dose of the vaccine. CNBG is upgrading its manufacturing techniques to expand its production capacity from 200 million doses per year to 300 million doses per year, and eventually to 1 billion doses. The vaccines are expected to hit the market in December. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), phase Ⅲ clinical trials of eight candidate vaccines had kicked off as of September 3 with half of the candidates being developed by Chinese companies.

A ceremony was held in Beijing on September 8 to honor individuals and groups who fought against the Covid-19 epidemic. President Xi Jinping conferred the Medal of the Republic, the highest civilian honor, on respiratory disease expert Zhong Nanshan; and the national honorary title “The People’s Hero” on vaccine developer General Chen Wei, traditional Chinese medicine expert Zhang Boli and Director of the Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital Zhang Dingyu.

China’s unprecedented railway spending boom will continue for at least another 15 years and see its high-speed network nearly double in length, China Railway Group, the state-owned railway builder, said in a new blueprint. Under the plan, China will construct about 200,000 km of railways by 2035, a milestone year in which the nation is set to achieve President Xi Jinping’s vision for becoming a “modern socialist country”. That will mean a 41% increase in rail lines criss-crossing the country, up from the 141,400 km today, including about 70,000 km of high-speed tracks that will be able to accommodate trains running at speeds of more than 250 km/h. China had roughly 36,000 km of high-speed rail lines at the end of July, accounting for more than two-thirds of the global total.

State-led spending on railways has been an important part of China’s growth story for more than a decade. In the first half of 2020, fixed-asset investment (FAI) in railways rose 1.2% from a year earlier to CNY325.8 billion, even though China’s overall FAI fell 3.1% over the same period. China’s high-speed railway boom started in 2008 as part of stimulus measures to mitigate the global financial crisis. While China’s stimulus spending has ebbed since, the railway construction boom has been largely uninterrupted, despite the deadly Wenzhou train crash in 2011, the conviction of former Railway Minister Liu Zhijun on corruption charges, and growing debt in the sector. Extending the railway network is a long-term strategy to bind the vast country together into a single market.

Larry Hu, Chief China Economist with Macquarie Capital, said the blueprint reflects Beijing’s intention to sustain domestic growth with infrastructure spending. “China’s economic growth has three pillars: exports, property and infrastructure investment,” Hu said. “Exports can no longer be relied upon, and property speculation will be curbed, so infrastructure investment is the last pillar that shouldn’t fall.” China has also started to export its high-speed railway technology and expertise, especially to countries taking part in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). President Xi Jinping’s slogan of fuxing (rejuvenation) has been used to name the next-generation bullet trains that are set to completely replace the hexie (harmony) series built under former President Hu Jintao. While China’s railway system is heavily indebted on the whole, some of the high-speed railway lines, including the one connecting Beijing and Shanghai, have already started seeing operating profits. This offers hope that China’s high-speed railway lines can be financially sustainable as long as there is enough market demand.

Under the new blueprint, all towns with at least 200,000 residents will be connected to the railway system by 2035, while every city with more than half a million residents will have access to high-speed railway lines. Even China’s most remote cities, such as Kashgar in Xinjiang and Shigatse in Tibet, will be linked with high-speed railway services by 2035 according to the plan. Shen Jianguang, Economist at JD Digits, said “that migrant workers from central and western regions are more willing to take jobs in nearby cities instead of flocking to the coastal areas. If you look at places such as Xian and Lanzhou, these western cities are emerging as regional economic hubs. “It is a blueprint for 2035, when China will be much richer and more prosperous than today. It makes sense to connect every city with half a million people into the high-speed railway network.” China Railway Group said the country will deploy a range of critical and core technology by 2035, including special materials for tracks, and intelligent operating systems in trains, the South China Morning Post reports.

The Global Times adds that China Railways will use the Beidou Navigation System and 5G network in the train control system, increasing the accuracy of positioning, guaranteeing stronger security, and improving transport capacity by more than 30% as trains could travel closer together. When the new train control system is adopted, a round trip on the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway could save about 9,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity. China Railway also vowed to make railway technologies self-sufficient by improving the independent innovation capacity and modernization of the railway industry chain. The construction of smart high-speed railways will be completed first. In July, China’s railway cargo shipments continued to grow, reaching 320 million tons, up 24.66 million tons or 8.5% year-on-year. In 2019, the number of railway passengers transported reached 3.66 billion, and freight transport topped 4.32 billion tons, an increase of 93.3% and 10.6%, respectively, compared with 2012.

China will add up to nine magnetic levitation railroads of over 1,000 kilometers in total length in the long term to boost regional connectivity and high-end equipment manufacturing. They will include a tourist railway line in Yunnan province, and intercity passenger lines and urban mass transit lines in Shanxi, Xinjiang and Sichuan. China aims to run high-speed maglev trains at 600 km per hour by the end of this year. Zhejiang province announced it will invest CNY100 billion to build a maglev railroad connecting Hangzhou and Shanghai. It will take about 15 minutes to complete the 162-km journey, said Feng Hao, Researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission’s Institute of Comprehensive Transportation.

Compared with standard bullet trains, the high-speed maglev trains have advantages which include reduced noise and vibration, and lower maintenance costs because they do not use wheels but hover centimeters above the track through the use of magnets, avoiding friction. Aside from the Yangtze River Delta region, the Development and Reform Commission of Shenzhen plans to introduce maglev rail lines to the Second Guangzhou-Shenzhen High Speed Railway to ease the operational pressure of regular and bullet trains in the area. The Second Guangzhou-Shenzhen High Speed Railway is to be built in 2025 and is expected to be completed in 2030. Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, also intends to launch maglev services between the city and Chongqing in the future.

China Railway Rolling Stock Corp, the country’s largest rolling stock manufacturer by production volume, is also developing wheel technology-based high-speed trains. The Europeans and Canadians have failed to compete with China in this field in recent years, said Chen Jian, Professor specializing in railways at Chongqing Jiaotong University. Japan remains a strong rival though in developing regular bullet and high-speed maglev trains. It has successfully tested 500 km/h and 603 km/h maglev trains with cryogenic superconducting technologies in recent years. Japan plans to build a high-speed maglev train line between Tokyo and Nagoya in 2027 or later. In addition to three existing maglev railroads in Beijing, Shanghai and Changsha, two short-distance low-speed maglev railways are being constructed in Qingyuan, Guangdong province, and Fenghuang county, Hunan province. Both are scheduled to be operational in 2021. China laid a total of 1,178 km of new railway lines, including 605 km of high-speed lines in the first half of this year. The country plans to lay at least 4,400 km of new railway lines in 2020, including 2,300 km of high-speed lines, the China Daily reports.

In other railway news, China plans to invest CNY200 million to build China-Europe railway distribution hubs in five cities to better use railway resources and reduce costs, according to the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planner. The five cities – Chengdu, Zhengzhou, Chongqing, Xian and Urumqi – are all major cities for China-Europe freight train services or key logistics channels. As more cities start to run freight trains between China and Europe, intensive competition has emerged in transportation prices and railway resources, said Wu Jingyu, Director of the Asia-Europe land bridge international freight train coordination service center, at the China Communications and Transportation Association.

The construction of transportation hubs will enable cities to share resources, cut costs and improve efficiency. According to Wang Guowen, Director of the Center for Logistics and Supply Chain Management at the Shenzhen-based think tank China Development Institute, most China-Europe freight trains pass through Urumqi without stopping, and the establishment of the new hub will enable domestic and foreign goods to travel on the trains at the same time to reduce costs. Wang also suggested that part of the CNY200 million in funding be used to build platforms for information sharing and coordinate trains running among the five cities, the China Daily reports.

China’s domestic aviation market is taking off on a steady recovery amid nationwide efforts to resume work, yet the situation of overseas flights remains gloomy, industry data showed. The average flying rate in June jumped to about 75% of its normal level, according to VariFlight, but overseas flights remain in scarce, with a flying rate of 18.3% of normal capacity. In June, average landing and takeoff volumes at domestic airports reached 22,470 aircraft, an increase of 18.8% compared to May, with maximum daily volumes nearing 2016 levels. The average passenger load factor was 66.85% of normal capacity, a 3.17 percentage point increase from May. The number of domestic flights taking off and landing in China now exceeds that of the U.S. by about 21.5%. Two airports, Jiangbei International Airport in Chongqing and Phoenix International Airport in Sanya in Hainan province, led the recovery, with their numbers of outbound flights bouncing back to over 80% of last year’s volumes, according to the VariFlight report. The first quarter of this year was the “darkest moment” for various airlines across the country. Six listed airlines lost a total of more than CNY20 billion and the industry suffered total losses of CNY40 billion.

China Southern Airlines said that flights between major cities have resumed and it has flown 1,310 flights each day on average since June, about 70% of the number of flights it operated at the same time last year. The air carrier expects its traffic in the third quarter to further jump to about 76% of last year’s level. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) said China’s carriers posted a 49.9% year-on-year decline in traffic in May, significantly improved from the 64.6% drop recorded in April. However, further improvement has recently been interrupted by flight cancellations to and from Beijing amid an increase in the number of new infections in the city, IATA said.

A number of foreign airlines, including Lufthansa and Air France, have restarted China flights. United Airlines recently announced its schedule for resumed services between San Francisco and Shanghai, with twice-weekly flights starting from July 8. United is the second U.S. carrier after Delta Air Lines to resume flights between Seattle and Shanghai in the period from June 25 to October 24. The U.S. and China will allow four weekly flights between the two countries. Xiamen Airlines said that it is applying to open more routes and increase frequencies to the U.S. in August. It aims to fly from Fuzhou to New York three times per week, and from Xiamen to Los Angeles with a stopover at Qingdao three times per week. It also hopes to increase the frequency of flights, as it currently operates just one weekly flight from Xiamen to Los Angeles, the Global Times reports.

Chinese carriers are adopting various innovative measures to increase their revenue and stay afloat. Shanghai-based China Eastern Airlines is planning to sell boxed food at chain supermarket G-Super in Shanghai from this month. It will be the first time that an air-catering firm is selling food at supermarkets in China. All the products have been improved from the regular in-flight meals. Eastern Air Catering, the in-air food supplier of China Eastern, received the food production license in April, and became the first company that can both produce in-flight meals and food for general consumers nationwide. As the number of flights was reduced, the pandemic also affected the business of air-catering firms.

On June 18, China Eastern launched its weekend-unlimited flight passes in the domestic market. Passengers with the flight pass, which cost CNY3,322, can take flights from China Eastern Airlines and Shanghai Airlines to a Chinese mainland city with no fixed times on weekends before the end of this year. It is the first such pass introduced in China. The hottest three routes were flights from Shanghai to Chengdu, Sichuan province, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and Xian, Shaanxi province. On several flights from Shanghai to Chengdu, the passenger load factor was higher than 90%, with most of the passengers using the pass.

Additionally, carriers are selling several products such as airplane models, porcelain, handwoven bags and lanterns through live-streaming sessions. Shenzhen Airlines has conducted at least five live-streaming sessions on Fliggy, the online travel agency arm of Alibaba Group. It sold discounted business-class tickets and some derivative products the airline developed by itself, the China Daily reports.

International airlines are starting to resume flights to China after a loosening of aviation restrictions. Lufthansa restarted flights to China last week, flying once a week between Frankfurt and Shanghai in the first regular scheduled flights operated by the German carrier since the pandemic began. “The flights between Shanghai and Frankfurt are hopefully only the first of further Lufthansa Group connections in the coming weeks and months between mainland China and our home markets Germany, Austria, and Switzerland,” said Veli Polat, Lufthansa’s Sales Manager for Greater China. United Airlines will resume its route between San Francisco and Shanghai, via Seoul, beginning on July 8, while Delta Air Lines restarted its China flights last week with twice-weekly trips to Shanghai. This was possible after China and the U.S. settled a dispute over aviation travel, even as bilateral relations worsen. In a reciprocal arrangement, two flights per week for each airline will be permitted. Other foreign airlines will be allowed a basic frequency of one flight per week.

“Resuming service to Shanghai from the United States is a significant step in rebuilding our international network,” said Patrick Quayle, United’s Vice President of international network and alliances. Chinese carriers are operating four flights between China and the U.S.: Air China’s Beijing-Los Angeles, China Eastern’s Shanghai-New York, China Southern’s Guangzhou-Los Angeles service and Xiamen Air’s Xiamen-Los Angeles flights. Air France and Air New Zealand have also restored their services to Shanghai. Air France restarted its passenger services between Shanghai and Paris on June 18, with a weekly passenger flight operated with Boeing 777-300 wide-body aircraft. Air New Zealand resumed passenger flights between Auckland and Shanghai.

China introduced the “Five Ones” aviation policy at the end of March in an effort to reduce the number of imported coronavirus cases. Just one weekly passenger flight per route, per airline, was permitted into the country. The policy, combined with suspended flights due to collapsed demand, saw the number of international airlines operating passenger routes into China drop from 123 to 28. At the same time, the number of Chinese airlines still flying fell from 30 to 19, according to data from the Civil Aviation Authority of China (CAAC). In early June, the White House threatened to block flights from Chinese airlines to the U.S. in retaliation for the policy after the U.S. transport department accused China’s aviation authority of failing to grant U.S. carriers such as United Airlines and Delta permission to resume passenger flights to China while Chinese airlines were continuing to operate charter flights.

One day after the White House announcement, the restrictions were loosened to allow one weekly passenger flight from any qualifying international airline, and two per week from U.S. carriers. However, a route “circuit breaker” – based on the number of positive new coronavirus test results from passengers – will still apply. China Southern Airlines’ Dhaka-Guangzhou route was the first to trigger this circuit breaker when 17 passengers from a June 11 flight tested positive for the new coronavirus upon their arrival in Guangzhou. The route has been suspended for four weeks starting from June 22, according to the CAAC, the South China Morning Post reports.

More countries are preparing to open up to foreign visitors, as the number of Covid-19 cases has been declining in some regions. However, industry insiders said it will still be difficult for Chinese to travel abroad in the short term. The European Union is expected to reopen borders on July 1 for travelers from countries where Covid-19 cases are under control. Chinese residents will also be allowed to visit the EU, on the condition Beijing will also allow European citizens to travel to China, Bloomberg reported. But foreigners holding visas or residence permits issued before March 28, 2020 still can’t travel to China and would require new visas which are difficult to obtain, and will only be delivered if the traveler can prove that his presence in China is necessary for diplomatic, economic or humanitarian reasons. However, even if some countries implement an open policy for Chinese tourists, there is a high probability that China will not initiate organized and individual overseas travel, given the risk of overseas epidemics, and the required quarantine time after returning to China, according to Ge Lei, Vice President of the China Tourism Marketing Association, as reported by the Global Times.