BEIJING — Foreign companies welcomed China’s decision to end quarantines for travelers from abroad as an important step to revive slumping business activity while Japan on Tuesday joined India in announcing restrictions on visitors from the country as infections surge.
The ruling Communist Party’s abrupt decision to lift some of the world’s strictest anti-virus controls comes as it tries reverse an economic downturn. It has ended curbs that confined millions of people to their homes and sparked protests, but hospitals have been flooded with feverish, wheezing patients as the virus spreads.
The announcement late Monday that quarantines for travelers from abroad will end Jan. 8 is the biggest step toward ending limits that have kept most foreign visitors out of China since early 2020. Quarantines were reduced last month from seven days to five.
Also Monday, the government downgraded the official seriousness of COVID-19 and dropped a requirement for people with the virus to be quarantined. That added to a rapid drumbeat of steps to dismantle controls that had been expected to stay in place at least through mid-2023.
“It finally feels like China has turned the corner,” the chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, Colm Rafferty, said in a statement. He said ending the quarantine “clears the way for resumption of normal business travel.”
Business groups have warned companies were shifting investment away from China because foreign executives were blocked from visiting.
The American chamber said more than 70% of companies that responded to a poll this month expect the impact of the latest wave of outbreaks to last no more than three months, ending in early 2023.
The British Chamber of Commerce expressed hope China will restart normal processing of business visas to allow “resumption of crucial people to people exchanges.” It said that will “contribute to restoring optimism and reinstating China as a priority investment destination.”
The move “will potentially boost business confidence,” but companies are likely to “wait to see how the situation on the ground evolves” before making long-term decisions, the European Chamber of Commerce in China said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Japan announced visitors from China will undergo virus tests starting Friday as a “temporary emergency measure.”
Visitors who test positive will be quarantined for one week, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced. He said Japan also would reduce a planned increase in the number of flights between Japan and China “just to be safe.”
That follows India’s decision last week to begin requiring a negative virus test for travelers from China, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand.
India also randomly tests 2% of airline passengers arriving from abroad.