What’s new: China’s cabinet announced Friday that the Chinese mainland will fully reopen its borders with Hong Kong and Macao on Feb. 6, dropping existing quotas and scrapping Covid test requirements for some inbound travelers from these cities.
People entering the mainland from the two special administrative regions with no travel history abroad in the past seven days will no longer need to present a negative nucleic acid test result upon entry, the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office said in a statement.
Group tours between the mainland and the cities will also resume, the statement said, while ports will reopen as fully as possible and various measures to facilitate crossings will be rolled out.
The background: The announcement is a further relaxation from Jan. 8, when the mainland began resuming normal cross-border travel and dropped most Covid restrictions that had been in place for nearly three years.
Since then, travelers from Hong Kong have not been required to go through quarantine upon arrival on the mainland. Beijing also started issuing tourist and business visas again for mainland residents visiting Hong Kong, and began reopening sea and land ports.
The scrapping of restrictions came after China abandoned its long-held hyper-restrictive “zero-Covid” policy in December.
Contact reporter Wang Xintong (xintongwang@caixin.com) and editor Bertrand Teo (bertrandteo@caixin.com)
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