BEIJING (AP) — After years of being separated from his wife in mainland China, Hong Kong resident Zhang Chengbin made sure to be among the first in line when the border crossing reopened on Sunday.
The ability for residents of the semiautonomous southern Chinese city to transit is one of the clearest signs that China has eased border restrictions imposed nearly three years ago, with travelers from abroad no longer subject to costly and time-consuming quarantines.
The virus has continued to spread in China despite what critics say Beijing lacks transparency.
“I was rushing to find her,” Zhang told The Associated Press, lugging a heavy suitcase, as he prepared to cross the road, where Lok Ma Chau station had been packed with eager travelers.
However, those transiting between Hong Kong and mainland China will still need to show a negative COVID-19 test taken within the past 48 hours – a measure China has protested when it has been imposed by other countries.
Hong Kong has been hit hard by the virus and its land and sea border checkpoints with the mainland have been largely closed for almost three years. Despite the risk of new infections, the reopening, which will see tens of thousands of people crossing the border each day with advance online bookings, is expected to provide a much-needed boost to Hong Kong’s tourism and retail sectors.
The two sides will continue to expand the number of crossing points from the current seven to 14, Hong Kong Chief Executive Lee Kar-chao said during an inspection of the station on Sunday morning.
“The goal is to return to normal life before the epidemic as soon as possible,” Li told reporters. “We want to get our cooperation back on track.”
The Global Times, a Communist Party newspaper, quoted Tan Luming, an official at the Shenzhen port on the border with Hong Kong, as saying that about 200 passengers were expected to take the ferry to Hong Kong and another 700 passengers would travel in the other direction, the first day of reopening. Tan said a steady increase in passenger numbers is expected in the coming days.
“I stayed up all night and got up at 4 a.m. because I was so excited to go back to the mainland to visit my 80-year-old mother,” a Hong Kong woman surnamed Zhang said upon arrival. She received “roses and health packs” in Shenzhen, the newspaper said.
Hong Kong media reported that there have been about 300,000 travel bookings from Hong Kong to mainland China, with a daily quota of 60,000.
Ferry services from China’s Fujian province to the Taiwanese-controlled Kinmen Island off the coast of China have also resumed.
The Suifenhe border crossing with Russia in the northern province of Heilongjiang also resumed normal operations, just in time for the opening of an ice and snow festival in the capital Harbin, a major tourist attraction.
In Ruili, which borders Myanmar, normal operations resumed after 1,012 days of partial or complete closure in response to repeated outbreaks blamed in part on tourists from neighboring China.
So far, the number of international flights arriving at China’s major airports is a fraction of what it used to be.
Eight flights from overseas were expected at Beijing’s main Capital International Airport on Sunday. Shanghai, China’s largest city, welcomed its first international flight under the new policy at 6:30am, with a handful of others to follow.
From March 2020, all international passenger flights to Beijing will be diverted to the designated first point of entry. Passengers are required to quarantine for up to three weeks.
“I was quarantined six times in different cities in (mainland China),” said Ivan Tang, a Hong Kong business traveler. “They were not simple experiences.”
Ming Guanghe, a Chinese living in Singapore, said that it was difficult to book tickets and find a place for PCR testing. Ming said quarantine measures and uncertainty about the outbreak kept him away from home.
Shanghai announced that it would once again start issuing ordinary passports for Chinese people traveling abroad and visiting relatives, and renewing and extending visas for foreigners. The restrictions have hit foreign businessmen and students particularly hard in Asia’s main financial hub.
China now faces surge in cases and hospitalizations in major cities and is poised to spread further into less developed regions in the coming days when the most important holiday, the Lunar New Year, begins.
Authorities said they expected domestic rail and air travel to double from a year earlier, bringing the overall figure closer to the 2019 holiday season before the pandemic hit.
Meanwhile, a growing number of foreign governments have imposed testing requirements on travelers from China — most recently Germany, Sweden and Portugal. On Saturday, German Foreign Minister Annalene Berberk urged citizens to avoid “unnecessary” travel to China, citing rising coronavirus cases and China’s “overwhelmed” health system.
German regulations also allow spot checks on arrival. Like other European countries, Germany will test for possible new variants of the virus in aircraft wastewater. The measures came into effect at midnight on Monday and will remain in place until April 7.
China, apparently concerned about its reputation, said the testing request had no scientific basis and threatened unspecified countermeasures.
Chinese health authorities publish daily tolls of new infections, severe cases and deaths, but these figures only include officially confirmed cases and use a very narrow definition of COVID-19-related deaths.
The National Health Commission reported 7,072 new confirmed cases of local transmission and two new deaths on Sunday — although individual provinces are reporting as many as 1 million cases a day.
Authorities say they can no longer provide a full picture of the outbreak since the government ended mandatory testing and allowed people with mild symptoms to self-test and recuperate at home. Vulnerability in China is increased by a general lack of exposure to the virus in the population and relatively low vaccination rates among the elderly.
A government spokesman insisted the situation was under control and dismissed allegations from the World Health Organization and others that they were not transparent about the outbreak that could lead to the emergence of new variants of the virus.
On Saturday, the National Health Commission issued regulations to strengthen monitoring of virus mutations, including testing of urban wastewater. The rules call for increased data collection from hospitals and local government health departments and enhanced checks for “pneumonia of unknown origin”.
Criticism has largely focused on the harsh enforcement of the regulations, including indefinite travel restrictions, with people confined to their homes for weeks, sometimes without adequate food or medical care.
The requirement that anyone who may test positive or have been in contact with such a person must be observed in a field hospital, where overcrowding, food and poor sanitation are often cited, has also sparked outrage.
The social and economic costs eventually sparked rare street protests in Beijing and other cities, possibly influencing the Communist Party’s decision to quickly relax the strictest measures.
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Associated Press correspondents Alice Fung and Karmen Li in Hong Kong and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report.