What’s new: China’s commitment to opening up will not change, and the country will only open its door wider to the outside world, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Wednesday.
The president delivered the message in a video speech to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade and the Global Trade and Investment Summit in Beijing. China is still relatively closed in many parts of the country as it battles the worst pandemic outbreak in two years.
“We should pursue dialogue rather than confrontation, demolishing walls rather than building them, integration rather than decoupling, and inclusiveness rather than exclusion,” Xi said.
China will actively carry out international cooperation in vaccine research and development, production and distribution, and strengthen global public health governance, Xi said.
The president called for countries to work together to advance the United Nations’ 2020 agenda for sustainable development, support the World Trade Organization’s multilateral trading system and maintain the security and stability of global industrial and supply chains.
Xi also pledged to foster an open, fair, just and nondiscriminatory environment for scientific and technological development.
The background: Since the pandemic began, China has implemented tight restrictions and quarantine policies for travelers flying into the country. China slashed the weekly number of inbound flights by nearly 90% in March 2020 by applying strict entry bans. In April 2021, China allowed some flights to reduce capacity to 40% if positive cases were found instead of facing immediate suspension.
Since the global surge of the highly transmissible omicron variant, a number of carriers have been hit with extra-long, eight-week service suspensions.
China’s civil aviation regulator recently vowed to firmly stick to the “dynamic zero-Covid” policy and general strategy to “prevent imported cases and resurgence of internal cases.”
Contact reporter Denise Jia (huijuanjia@caixin.com) and editor Bob Simison (bob.simison@caixin.com)
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