Coronavirus - those in China, and general discussion

[ChTTay]

Mostly I’m hearing October at the earliest for borders opening. However, this seems to just be some news or blog reports rather than the government saying it explicitly. 

[889]

My working assumption -- absent any big upticks -- is that both Hong Kong and the Mainland will be open without quarantine by mid-October, for the trade fair season. It could happen earlier, of course, but at this stage I wouldn't make any plans based on an earlier opening.

 

[xinoxanu]

If they are still awarding CSC scholarships for next semester's, then I'm guessing that by mid-september/early october they are expecting to reopen the borders for students and relaxing the rules for those that really need to be in China without being essential per se.

 

But I'd say that those who are not in-country already will have to jump through extra hoops far beyond that timeline, because they won't want to risk an unnecessary second wave of imported cases... but rest assured that, if by the time they reopen, the rest of the world is experiencing that second wave, then they will close them up again in a pinch. I wouldn't really make plans for anything China until next year the soonest.

[pan.kasper]

I have been stuck in South Korea for 3 months now, still waiting to be allowed to return. The thing is that SK is not even my own country, I'm European but I can't go back to Europe either + all my things are still in China.

I think we can expect gradual opening soon. It is already slowly reopening for South Korea and some other Asian countries (though I still can't return as so far it's mostly allowed for work-related reasons, while I'm just a masters student + university explicitly prohibited students to return). EU is about to reopen borders by mid-June, I don't see a reason why China wouldn't do the same. Especially since keeping the borders closed down does not slow the spread of the virus, it's 100% political.

 

[xinoxanu]

4 hours ago, pan.kasper said:

It is already slowly reopening for South Korea

 

As you are probably aware, Seoul is currently dealing with a potential resurgence of the virus that could reset the country's situation back to the start of the pandemic.The same is true in China, with some new virus clusters in the north of the country that have already been going on for a while.

 

The only difference is that China is one of the few countries in the world that can actually enforce any kind of lockdown/take any measures to stop the virus dead on its tracks and, at the same time, doesn't really need to keep its borders open beyond essential travel in&out the country. Countries in Europe, however, are not self-sufficient and require a constant influx of people and goods to maintain their economies, so they will be rushing to open their borders as soon as Covid-19 becomes "mainstream" and we learn to live with it. This scares China and the more the rest of the world opens its borders, the more the Chinese will close theirs.

[pan.kasper]

On 5/28/2020 at 10:09 PM, xinoxanu said:

doesn't really need to keep its borders open beyond essential travel in&out the country.

what makes you think that China can keep it's borders shut without a serious harm to its economy? There's basically no country in the world that can be entirely self-reliant, China is not an exception here. China needs foreigners, especially the foreign investors, to keep the economy flowing. 

 

On 5/28/2020 at 10:09 PM, xinoxanu said:

This scares China and the more the rest of the world opens its borders, the more the Chinese will close theirs.

i don't really think that's the case. China was actually quite late to close its borders, they only did that in late April when pretty much every other country has already done that. I don't see a reason why they would do it differently now. It might come with mandatory coronavirus check + two weeks quarantine in the hotel, but i believe they are not gonna keep the borders closed for long. I really hope that China can be rational in all the madness going on in the world right now.

 

Perhaps i'm being overly optimistic, but I believe some people will be let back in by summer and the rest probably September/October. Most of the countries have already passed its peak, sure there is still a risk of a second wave, but i think what we are likely going to see is gradual reopening of the borders

[mungouk]

Maybe some movement starting to happen here for Singapore, Japan, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland. It seems the situation with the US has turned into a political football though.

 

It was already reported a week or so ago that South Korea was negotiating some kind of fast track / green channel for business travellers.

 

 

Straits Times (Singapore), May 27: China to allow Singapore and other countries to apply for 'green channel' for flights: Chinese state media

 

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BEIJING - China will soon relax its border controls for Singapore and several countries, allowing certain categories of people to travel to some cities.
 

Chinese state media on Wednesday (May 27) reported that the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) will let domestic and foreign airlines apply for "green channels" for chartered flights to airports in the mainland.

 

The countries given the green light are Singapore, Japan, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Switzerland, said the media reports.

 

 

 

[xinoxanu]

1 hour ago, pan.kasper said:

On 5/28/2020 at 3:09 PM, xinoxanu said:

doesn't really need to keep its borders open beyond essential travel in&out the country.

what makes you think that China can keep it's borders shut without a serious harm to its economy? There's basically no country in the world that can be entirely self-reliant, China is not an exception here. China needs foreigners, especially the foreign investors, to keep the economy flowing. 

 

Yes, that's what I meant by essential travel, among other things.

 

But even that is not entirely true nowadays: China is already self-sufficient in many ways, and could be 100% autonomous if they wanted to (which they don't). 

 

If you want, we can open a new thread to go deeper on that, it's a very interesting topic.

 

1 hour ago, pan.kasper said:

they only did that in late April when pretty much every other country has already done that. I don't see a reason why they would do it differently now.

 

As I pointed out, the difference is that now they are not sick anymore and don't want to be sick again. Keep in mind that while the Chinese may do things abruptly (from a western point of view), they are also playing a long-term game and closing the borders too soon would go against those interests (by adding more wood to a fire they had started), so they waited to see how others would react.

 

PS: I am purposely being vague on my answers because I don't want to spend time writing pages and pages of text on this if we don't actually want to talk about it or if noone wants to even read it. I also don't have all the answers on this topic, but I am studying a BA in International Relations (if that helps), so I am not a troll 哈哈 ?

[xinoxanu]

3 hours ago, mungouk said:

fast track / green channel for business travellers.

 

Clearly some progress there, but definitely not fast for a businessman: 48h quarantine on arrival to China + whatever the origin country wants to impose on the return.

 

Sure, the origin country may not force you if this "fast-track" materialises, but out of deference to friends/family/colleagues, most will choose to... I work for an energy company (Fortune 500) and company travel will still be restricted even for the higher ups until september the soonest. Even inside Europe.

[abcdefg]

1 hour ago, xinoxanu said:

 

If you want, we can open a new thread to go deeper on that, it's a very interesting topic...

 

PS: I am purposely being vague on my answers because I don't want to spend time writing pages and pages of text on this if we don't actually want to talk about it or if noone wants to even read it. I also don't have all the answers on this topic, but I am studying a BA in International Relations (if that helps), so I am not a troll 哈哈

 

I would be interested in hearing what you have to say. I'm sure others would as well. Please do start a new thread. 

[xinoxanu]

1 hour ago, abcdefg said:

 

I would be interested in hearing what you have to say. I'm sure others would as well. Please do start a new thread. 

 

Since I offered, let me think of a way to approach this to encourage an interesting dialog. There's so many ways we can tackle this.

 

I am also not sure if @roddy actually approves? We could be getting very deep into politics, people may hear things they'd prefer not to hear, and so on...

[xinoxanu]

And since we mentioned South Korea, this just came in: South Korea postpones reopening of 800 schools. Also: UK, France, Spain and Italy excluded from Greece border reopening

 

Examples of how countries are starting to backtrack or planning to do so soon, while also creating barriers between other countries even if they need them more now than ever.

[Lu]

1 hour ago, xinoxanu said:

I am also not sure if @roddy actually approves? We could be getting very deep into politics, people may hear things they'd prefer not to hear, and so on...

Make your thread in the Chinese News and Current Events subforum, and read the sticky first. Stick to facts, don't generalise and don't insult anyone, and things should be alright. If things get out of hand and no moderator has seen it, report a post and we'll take a look. Nothing bad happens automatically if you report a post, it's just an easy way to alert the mods that something requires their attention.

[imron]

4 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

people may hear things they'd prefer not to hear,

People can close their tab if they don't want to read things.  I agree with the suggestions Lu had above.  Follow them and you'll be fine.

[pan.kasper]

9 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

China is already self-sufficient in many ways, and could be 100% autonomous if they wanted to (which they don't). 

 

ok, that's actually not true at all. I mean yea, it could be autonomous, any country could, but that would mean cutting its economy by 90%, people going back to massive poverty, that's definitely not going to happen. China is the largest exporter in the world, its biggest market being the US and is largely relying on foreign investments, just like any other country. Politicans claiming that their country can be self-sufficient is nothing but the worst kind of populism, we can observe in the current US administration

 

9 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

I am studying a BA in International Relations (if that helps), so I am not a troll 哈哈 ?

I believe you have some expertise but I also have some idea what I'm talking about, I'm doing masters in Chinese Law at the moment and one of the topics of my master thesis relates to the trade war and China-US relations and the trade law. And as much as I think Cold War 2.0 might be inevitable at that point (unless we have a change of administration in November), i don't see a reason why China would also want to isolate itself from other countries too. In the last few years we could observe a process of Chinese increasing opening to the world and increased involvement in the international affairs via certain economic initatives like Belt and Road program. 

 

10 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

Sure, the origin country may not force you if this "fast-track" materialises, but out of deference to friends/family/colleagues, most will choose to... I work for an energy company (Fortune 500) and company travel will still be restricted even for the higher ups until september the soonest. Even inside Europe.

That's very interesting, can you tell more about that? By the company travel do you within Europe or also to China? 

 

7 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

Examples of how countries are starting to backtrack or planning to do so soon, while also creating barriers between other countries even if they need them more now than ever.

I agree with that, what we need the most right now is international cooperation, but what we are getting instead is isolationism and xenophobia. And now that the virus is basically in all the countries in the world, there is literally no benefit to closing the borders

[roddy]

Do start a new topic though. And when you find yourself

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microquoting every

paragraph someone

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else writes so

you can rebut it,

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it's probably getting

a bit boring for

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everyone bar the two

posters arguing.

[xinoxanu]

10 hours ago, pan.kasper said:

20 hours ago, xinoxanu said:

Sure, the origin country may not force you if this "fast-track" materialises, but out of deference to friends/family/colleagues, most will choose to... I work for an energy company (Fortune 500) and company travel will still be restricted even for the higher ups until september the soonest. Even inside Europe.

That's very interesting, can you tell more about that? By the company travel do you within Europe or also to China? 

 

I am still unsure about personally opening a new thread and, to be honest, I always prefer to interject on someone's post instead of carrying all the weight on my back... but I don't mind answering this question, as long as you let me keep my job, position and company out of the picture.

 

I also must clarify, however, that my knowledge of our global operations is quite limited as a whole, but I can say that my team (Europe-based) plays a key part on the company's logistics in Europe, Russia, Northern Africa & Middle East, as well as Quality Control all over the world, including Taiwan/China.

 

The easy part: all cross-country movement inside Europe has been restricted since March's end. We had about 2 weeks since the pandemic was declared to wrap things up and move operations 100% online, which I'd say we have quite managed. Everybody that still needs to be on site (think about drivers, engineers, lawyers, etc), inside Europe, is allowed to go about their business as long as they have a bunch of technical certificates and sanitary clearance, but they do have time restrictions (even for emergencies). New and ongoing "developments" are also still done as usual (third parties are still enforcing contracts, mind you), but we are trusting our local teams to carry on with many things without the usual HQ "supervision" (all operations are centralized in our main headquarters, from HR or payroll to IT, logistics, etc)... which is not working that well, but not much we can do about that. This week I've had 3 meetings on the issues derived from this - the same ones I had last week and the one before that.

 

Now, in regards to China, since my company has formed a joint venture with the State, this also means all operations are centralized there and have a greater degree of autonomy, for obvious reasons. Still, sometimes there's movement from abroad (US/Europe) when we need engineers or suits to supervise a new development or to ensure that a large operation is going as planned (specially when it comes to quality control, since the different standards around the world are a pain we have to juggle with) but so far I am not aware of this happening since March end, either. In fact, such lack of supervision and on-site contact is actually affecting the way we all "communicate", something that was proved a couple weeks ago when our global VPN service was down and China couldn't manage to talk to the americans, so they had to do "everything" through Europe instead. My boss was pretty pissed to have to wake up at 2am, but I was even less-pleased because, in all honesty, my Chinese sucks... and more at that time of the day.

 

PS: Wow, definitely it's not easy to be THAT ambiguous, had to rewrite this a couple times, but I hope you get what I am trying to say.

[Saxondale]

Most likely August/September for us normal folks. 

[imron]

1 hour ago, xinoxanu said:

I am still unsure about personally opening a new thread 

It costs nothing.

 

1 hour ago, xinoxanu said:

I always prefer to interject on someone's post instead of carrying all the weight on my back.

There is no more or less weight for having started a thread.  In fact, threads weigh nothing at all.

[xinoxanu]

What I meant is that I don't want to do a monologue, because only a few of you appear to be interested in this dialog.

 

In the other hand, I always refrain myself from being the "centre of attention", specially when it comes to discussing China, so I prefer to chime in... you know, the internet is not really that safe in this day and age, and everything can be traced by Reddit trolls. 

 

Paranoia, sure, but don't want anything biting my butt down the line. Many politicians in 2020 can agree with that.

 

In any case, a topic has already been opened so let's continue that talk over there, shall we ?