January 11, 2023

After widespread outcry against the most rigorous COVID-19 control measure, i.e. the notorious Zero COVID policy, China decided to abruptly scrap the policy altogether in December.

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Hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens were freed overnight from three-year virtual house arrest. What is more thrilling to the ordinary Chinese is that China’s border clamping policy aimed at curtaining COVID-19 infection by blocking cross-border movements was formally taken down as this piece is being composed.

The world, once so worried that China’s Zero COVID policy could have a deep dent in the global economy due to a disrupted supply chain, is now facing a new, but not less pressing, issue to deal with. Waves of freed Chinese citizens are pouring out of China’s border and arriving at the doorstep of any country that happens to be on their itinerary. But the longed-for arrival of Chinese goods after the resumption of regular supply activities is still months away.

Given the current outbreak of the supposed COVID-19 variant, many countries (the U.S., Japan, Spain, France, etc.) have imposed strict border regulation measures that require travelers from China (Hong Kong and Macau included) to provide COVID-negative proof at port of entry.

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This time around, Italy was the first western country that implemented these restrictions. This action reminds the world a painful past. Exactly three years ago, when the whole world was uneasy about receiving tourists from China where a mysterious infectious disease was spreading and killing people like wildfire, Italy opened its arms to Chinese tourists, and literally embraced many of them in Italy’s streets. Within less than three months, Italy became the first non-China country hit hard by the COVID-19 virus, and was among the countries that suffered the heaviest casualties due to COVID-19 infection.

The 2020 lesson is learned. But the measures taken now by the world might not be adequate.

Most of the current COVID-restriction measures implemented by the above countries only require COVID-negative documentation originated from China. But any documentation from this source is highly untrustworthy.

China’s public COVID-19 testing system, which employed the common polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method that detects specific DNA sequence of the COVID virus, is notoriously fraudulent. Collected samples often were randomly designated positive as needed without even going through testing, and discarding collected samples without testing is so common that this practice no longer enraged the ordinary Chinese for quite some time.

The other COVID-detection method commonly used in China is the self-detection kit that detect fragments of the COVID virus protein. Although households would not throw away the kit without using it, the detection accuracy of those kits is actually worse than tossing a coin, as evaluated by some biomedical laboratories in 2020. The reason for this low quality and reliability is that these self-detection kits were almost unexceptionably manufactured by unknown biotech firms that were registered in a gold rush since 2020 to catch the COVID-19 economic windfall.

Documentation derived from using these fraudulent means would not provide intended protection to host countries where Chinese travelers are trying to get in.