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| Many parts of Asia relax epidemic control, open borders to boost economy |
HONG KONG — After two-and-a-half years of tight controls to contain the coronavirus pandemic , some of Asia's last remaining holdouts are opening their borders and moving to boost their economies in a world that has largely learned to live with the virus.
Hong Kong said on Friday it would lift mandatory hotel quarantine requirements for arrivals starting this week, following a similar announcement by Taiwan. Japan said it would lift restrictions on the number of daily arrivals and fully open to tourists from October 11.
After last week's flurry of announcements, China is the only major country still in place with strict border controls, with the ruling Communist Party still reluctant to abandon its " new crown zero " policy. Those who enter China are mainly their own citizens, who still face the requirement to quarantine in hotels for seven days at their own expense.
When the new crown pandemic swept the world in early 2020, many governments in Asia quickly closed their borders, and most areas did not allow non-residents to enter. Reopening borders has been a difficult and slow process, with officials worried about the vulnerability of the elderly population to the virus and the health system collapsing.
But isolation has become unbearable, especially now that much of the world has fully reopened. With the loss of big spenders and struggling economies, business leaders in Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan are mounting pressure on officials to rethink their anti-epidemic policies.
Over the past two years, both Japan and Hong Kong have missed opportunities to host large global gatherings that are crucial to their status as key regional hubs.
Although the Tokyo Olympics, originally scheduled to open in August 2020, have been postponed for a year, most events have banned spectators from attending . High-profile mega-events in Hong Kong such as Art Basel, the rugby sevens and a regional financial conference have all been canceled because non-residents are banned from entering the city.
People's perception of the epidemic is changing. In Asia, hospitalizations and deaths are falling even as infections surge in many parts of the world, as a recently circulated variant proved to be less virulent. Authorities have been able to tolerate higher numbers of infections as vaccination rates have increased.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said last week that the end of the pandemic was "imminent", suggesting that many governments were ready to start envisioning a post-coronavirus world.
"We absolutely understand that we need to protect the controllable situation of the overall epidemic situation, but also allow society to have a maximum (space) for normal and economic activities," Hong Kong's top leader, Lee Kar-chiu, said before announcing the easing of restrictions on Friday.
It was the most candid acknowledgment yet that stringent rules tied to mainland China's policies to contain the coronavirus have taken a toll on Hong Kong officials no longer willing to bear.
For much of the outbreak, Hong Kong has adopted some of the strictest quarantine requirements in the world, at one point requiring arrivals to undergo a mandatory 21-day hotel quarantine. Officials announced on Friday that the policy, which will take effect this week, only requires tourists to undergo nucleic acid testing within a few days of entering the country, along with home medical monitoring.
"People around the world have been asking, 'When can we go to Japan?'" Kishida said before announcing the new rules last Wednesday, according to public broadcaster NHK. "Now, I want them to make plans to visit Japan and come here to taste Japanese food."
Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen said she was ready to reconnect with the rest of the world.
"We have finally reached the last juncture of the epidemic," Tsai wrote on her Facebook page. "Now, we will do our best to revive tourism, stimulate the economy, and lead Taiwan's economic development to great strides!"
Tourism has been slow to recover across much of East Asia due to restrictions on entry. IATA Director General Willie Walsh said in April that Hong Kong, once a major aviation hub, "has now effectively disappeared from the air route map". Hong Kong International Airport recorded only 5,080 passenger flight movements in August this year , compared with 30,000 in the same period in 2019.
In 2019, Japan earned about $46.1 billion in revenue from foreign tourists, according to the Japan External Trade Organization. After the epidemic began, almost all of this income disappeared.
Japan had tried intermittently to restart tourism before the latest measures. The government tweaked the rules in June to allow foreign group tourists to enter. The entry regulations were changed again in September, but the number of tourists is still strictly controlled.
The tourism recovery has been slow: only 12,405 tourists arrived in June this year, according to Japanese government figures.
The reopening of Japan could unleash a lot of pent-up travel demand, providing a much-needed boost to the domestic travel and hospitality sectors. Nearly 32 million international tourists visited Japan in 2019, triple the number six years earlier, according to government data .
To encourage domestic tourism, Japan intends to offer its residents discounts on government subsidies at hotels, restaurants and certain recreational activities, Kishida said. That revived the "Go To Travel" initiative launched by Kishida's predecessor to boost domestic tourism, which had been hit hard in the early months of the pandemic.
Hong Kong, too, will find that tourism will not recover too quickly. Hong Kong needs to find a balance between obeying Beijing and meeting the needs of the international community. Beijing has the final say on Hong Kong affairs, so it cannot go as far in opening up as its neighbors.
While Hong Kong's new rules are a major change, tourists are still banned from restaurants and bars during a mandatory three-day medical surveillance period, raising doubts that the new rules will be enough of a draw for tourists looking to visit the city briefly.
The new rules will be tested in the coming weeks, with banking chiefs from around the world expected to travel to Hong Kong for a summit that, according to the Hong Kong government, will prove that Hong Kong is still worthy of its self-styled title of "Asia's world city". Hong Kong will also host a fintech conference and rugby sevens this November - an annual tournament that was one of the city's biggest events before the pandemic.
But whether Beijing changes its strict rules is what matters most to the many small businesses in Hong Kong that depend on tourists from the mainland.
"This policy doesn't help us much, because our business mainly relies on mainland tourists, whose spending power is stronger than that of European and American tourists." said Wang Da, 50, who runs a local restaurant on Lamma Island. Food-focused seafood restaurants, such as stir-fried crab with ginger and clams in black bean sauce.
"I hope that more European and American tourists can come to (Lamma Island), so that our business will be better, but I think our revenue may still not be able to return to the state before the epidemic," Mr. Wang said. He also said that during the epidemic, there was basically no business.
Asian governments need more measures to help their economies grow.
Japan's economy has slowly started to recover, with more shoppers filling malls and families eating out. But domestic consumers have been pained by a plunge in the yen, which recently hovered at its weakest level in nearly 25 years.
Unable to recover from the measures, thousands of small businesses in Hong Kong have permanently closed as several rounds of social distancing rules forced restaurants and bars to close for weeks or months . The draconian measures, combined with a government crackdown on opposition in the former British colony, have driven young Hong Kongers, expatriates and multinationals to leave the city permanently.
While Taiwan's economy remains relatively healthy, thanks to the semiconductor industry, tourism has also been greatly affected. Taiwan has limited the number of people entering the country during the pandemic and at one point banned non-residents entirely. Tourists visiting Taiwan reached 11.8 million in 2019, compared with 140,479 last year.
"The days of being able to travel abroad are finally coming to an end," said Apulier Lin, a 36-year-old tour guide who lives in Taichung. "This is timely rain for the tourism industry."
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