Beijing now wants the world to live with the virus

IN CHINA’S binary view of the pandemic, there can be only zeros and ones – that is, Covid-zero or Covid for everyone.

Having scrapped its pandemic policy in an abrupt about-face that it failed to warn the international community was coming, Beijing has now decided that attempts to limit the spread of the virus are unacceptable – even those over which it has no control. President Xi Jinping’s administration has now stopped issuing visas for South Korean and Japanese travellers, after those countries (among others) put in place new curbs when infections started surging through China. With Lunar New Year fast approaching and Chinese citizens able to leave their country for the first time in years, its neighbours have imposed testing requirements on travellers, with Seoul also halting the issuance of some short-term visas, and Japan looking to limit flights.

This comes even as China still requires visitors from all nations, including South Korea and Japan, to submit a negative polymerase chain reaction test before boarding a flight to the country. The double standards from Beijing are a throwback to 2020, when it decried any action from other nations that sought to limit the spread of the virus by targeting Chinese travellers, even as the country locked down domestically.