Tourism restarts during May holiday, NPC and CPPCC to convene this month
May 5, 2020 Category Health, Weekly
Chinese tourists eagerly ventured outside their home cities as they enjoyed a five-day holiday from May 1 till May 5. The number of people traveling outside their home cities jumped nearly 50% at the start of the Labor Day weekend, compared with the first day of the Tomb Sweeping holiday on April 4. Bookings for outbound flights from Beijing jumped 15 times in just half an hour after Beijing announced the lowering of its emergency response level and lifted other travel restrictions. The country’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said there were nearly 85 million domestic tourist trips made in the first three days of the holiday. Tourism revenue totaled CNY35.06 billion from May 1 to May 3. Mao Shoulong, Professor of Public Administration at the Renmin University of China, told the Global Times that work will resume completely in Beijing after the May Day holiday.
The annual sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) will start on May 22 and 21 respectively. They were postponed from early March due to the coronavirus pandemic. This shows that the Covid-19 epidemic in China is fully under control, according to the Global Times. Beijing last week lowered its epidemic emergency response from the top level to level II, after the capital city recorded zero new imported and domestically transmitted cases for 13 consecutive days. Neighboring Tianjin and Hebei province also lowered their response level. The Beijing municipal government announced that the city will not require domestic arrivals to provide a negative nucleic acid report before checking into hotels as long as they can present the green health code. The capital city also lifted the 14-day quarantine requirement for people from other low-risk areas in China. But the requirement remains in place for people arriving from Hubei province and medium- and high-risk areas as well as international arrivals.
Yung Chan, an NPC Deputy and Vice Chairman of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, said that the annual political meetings would be shorter this year in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic. At the NPC session, the GDP growth target for this year will be announced. It is expected to be set between 0% and 3%. The two sessions are expected to focus on public health, including discussing a biosecurity law and a revision to the law on animal epidemic prevention.
China and the Republic of Korea have agreed to open a fast-track lane for key business, logistics, production, technical and service personnel with an urgent need to travel between the two countries. Due to China’s temporary suspension of entry by most foreigners, which started in late March, only foreigners coming to China for necessary economic, trade, scientific or technological activities or for emergency humanitarian needs can apply for visas. Xing Haiming, the newly appointed Chinese Ambassador to the Republic of Korea (ROK), told Yonhap News Agency in Seoul that China had only issued 108 visas around the world recently, with many of them issued to citizens of the ROK.
Hong Kong will extend mandatory quarantine for all inbound travelers from the mainland, a measure that was supposed to expire on May 7, for another month to June 7. Starting from February 8, Hong Kong has been requiring all travelers entering Hong Kong from the mainland, including both Hong Kong residents and non-residents, to undergo a mandatory quarantine for 14 days. Students, school staff and some other personnel will be exempted. Hong Kong’s economy could fare even worse than expected and shrink by between 4% and 7% in 2020 because of the serious and sustained impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Financial Secretary Paul Chan said. Last year, it shrank by 1.2% due to the U.S.-China trade war and anti-government unrest.
The latest row between China and the U.S. about the origin of the coronavirus was further escalating, with U.S. President Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo suggesting that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and the Chinese authorities insisting that the virus emerged naturally. President Trump even warned that he would impose more sanctions on China if it was proven the virus originated in the country. Pompeo claimed that the WIV is located close to the wet market were some of the first Covid-19 cases were detected. However, the WIV has two locations and the BSL-4 maximum containment lab – holding bat coronavirus samples – is located 50 kilometers from the city center, Yang Zhanqiu, Deputy Director of the Pathogen Biology Department at Wuhan University, told the Global Times. He added that “Western politicians are making baseless accusations without getting their facts straight. Their actions reflected their eagerness to make China the scapegoat of the pandemic.” China opposes any arbitrary international inquiry into the Covid-19 pandemic that would presume its guilt and politicize its investigation to stigmatize China, Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng said. “One should not accuse China first and then run so-called international investigations just to make up the evidence,” he added. Le opposed holding China accountable or demanding it make reparations, saying such remarks are a “preposterous political farce”. Richard Horton, Editor-in-Chief of The Lancet has said it is “not helpful” and “unfair” to blame China for being the source of the Covid-19 pandemic. He said the international community should instead work with the Chinese authorities in dealing with the outbreak. “China didn’t want this epidemic. China isn’t responsible for this pandemic. It’s happened,” Horton said in an interview with Chinese broadcaster CCTV.
Nine vaccine candidates have entered human trials and more than 70 others are under preclinical studies. China was quickly into this global effort, with five of those nine vaccines developed by domestic companies. “It will be very difficult for all the 32 vaccines developed by the Chinese vaccine producers and more than 100 being developed around the world to go through all the phases,” Zhu Fengcai, Deputy Director of the Jiangsu Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said. He added that his team anticipated moving vaccine trials to countries where Covid-19 was still prevalent to run random, double-blind and placebo-controlled trials. Yang Xiaoming, Chairman of the China National Biotec Group, which has two inactivated vaccines in clinical trials at subsidiaries, told China Central Television (CCTV) that China was no longer suitable for phase three trials.
China’s manufacturing sector further recovered last month but a challenge emerged from external uncertainties, officials and analysts said. The official purchasing managers index (PMI) for the manufacturing sector came in at 50.8 for April, versus 52 the previous month, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said. Statistician Zhao Qinghe said that 99.7% of surveyed large and medium-sized manufacturers had resumed work. The Caixin China General Manufacturing PMI for April returned to contraction territory at 49.4, with the sub-index for new export orders falling to the lowest level since December 2008.
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