Leave your partner and children behind. Quarantine for up to one month. Get inoculated with a Covid-19 vaccine from China, if you can find one. And get ready for an anal swab.
Last year, people trying to go to China encountered some of the most formidable barriers to entry in the world. To stop the coronavirus, China prohibits tourists and short-term business travelers and sets strict standards for all other foreigners, even those who have lived there for years.
The restrictions hampered the operations of many companies, separated families and affected the lives of thousands of international students. Global companies say their ranks of foreign workers in the country have narrowed dramatically.
In a time of tense tensions with the United States and other countries, China is keeping itself safe from the pandemic. At the same time, it runs the risk of further isolating its economy, the second largest in the world, at a time when its main trading partners are emerging from their own self-imposed crises.
“When it comes to such draconian measures, you will deprive the rights of people who are big fans of China and are not allowed to return to the country where they lived,” said Alexander Style, the British owner of a Shanghai-based company that manufactures electric vehicle parts for export, which he was forced to move with his family to New Jersey.
Other countries have their own travel restrictions, although few are as strict. The United States, for example, prohibits foreigners traveling directly from China, unless they have a green card or certain close relatives of American citizens. It also prohibits the departure of foreigners from Europe, Brazil and other countries.
Australia allows only a few hundred of its citizens and permanent residents to enter each day, while Japan has banned foreign workers and students from entering since late December.
In China, officials consider travel limits crucial to success in containing the virus. Since the outbreak began, China has reported more than 101,000 cases of Covid. Although questions have been raised about the accuracy of the numbers, they are much lower than in the United States, where 29.8 million people tested positive for the virus. China’s strategy reflects both its strengths and weaknesses.
China was the only major economy to grow last year. She knows that companies will find a way to keep their Chinese operations running, with or without expatriates, and bet that they will come back when the pandemic subsides. At the same time, China’s restrictions highlight the inadequacies of its vaccine deployment, which has been slow compared to those in the United States, Britain and other countries.
Foreign executives think China is likely to be one of the last countries in the world to reopen fully, perhaps next year, after the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. China’s restrictions will mean significant delays in building large factories or obtaining sales orders, according to business groups.
In the past few days, Chinese embassies in at least 50 countries have said that foreigners wishing to enter China could avoid some paperwork by getting a vaccine against Chinese-made Covid-19. The government presented the rule as a relaxation of visa application procedures. But it does not help travelers from countries like the United States, where Chinese vaccines are not available.
“It’s kind of Catch-22,” said Jeff Jolly, who has been in prison in the United States since July after leaving Shanghai, where he runs a language training and academic consultancy center.
In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China said: “We believe this is a significant exploration to facilitate international travel once mass vaccination has been achieved”.
As variants of more lethal and infectious viruses have appeared in other countries in recent months, China has introduced new costly requirements.
At the end of last year, it basically stopped allowing anyone to bring a spouse or child to the country. Since January, travelers arriving in Beijing from countries with severe outbreaks have had to undergo weekly anal smear tests during quarantine, with fecal material tested for traces of the virus. The move sparked outraged complaints from the United States and Japan.
Last month, the government announced that foreign and Chinese travelers from more than two dozen countries would have to spend two weeks of quarantine supervised by their employer abroad before they were even allowed to fly to China. Then, after landing, they were to spend two more weeks in a government-run quarantine facility.
The number of foreign business managers in China has dropped. A survey of 191 companies in southern China by the American Chamber of Commerce found that 70% had fewer than five expatriate employees in China at the end of last year, compared with 33% a year earlier. The proportion of companies without expatriates rose to 28%, from 9% a year earlier.
Style, the owner of the electric vehicle parts company, said the Chinese visa process now favors large companies that contribute a large share of tax revenue, not start-ups like yours. He said he has settled in the United States – his wife is an American – and does not plan to return to China anytime soon.
The Foreign Ministry said China’s re-entry policy “treats all foreign employees equally, and there is no so-called differential treatment”.
China’s restrictions have been exacerbated by visa decisions and entry requirements that may seem arbitrary to anyone trying to return.
Glyn Wise, who taught English literature at an international school in Shanghai, obtained a work visa at the Chinese Embassy in London in October. But the agency that helped prepare his application told him later that Chinese border officials would not accept the visa.
“They often changed the rules about who they were accepting,” said Wise. He said he was looking for job opportunities outside of China.
But many others are still hopeful and some have organized social media campaigns to draw attention to their situation.
Nearly 13,000 international students held outside China signed an online petition asking Beijing to allow them to return, while others launched a Twitter campaign called #TakeUsBackToChina.
Amanuel Tafese, an Ethiopian student enrolled at a university in the southwestern city of Chengdu, he said he had tried to take his classes online since he was excluded from the country at the beginning of last year. But he had to rent a space to do that, because there is no electricity or internet access at his family’s home, 280 miles from the capital, Addis Ababa.
Tafese says he can’t find a job because he doesn’t have a degree and depends on his father’s small income to support himself.
“All of this depressed me,” wrote Tafese by email.
China’s harsh restrictions, including its recent ban on dependents, have also taken an emotional toll on some families who have been forced to live apart for months, in some cases more than a year.
In February last year, Jessie Astbury Allen took her two daughters to England to await the outbreak that swept China, in the hope that they would be reunited with her husband in Shanghai at Easter.
It was a plan she would regret.
“I knew we were doing the wrong thing, but it was too late,” she said, crying, as she described how it felt to land at London’s Heathrow airport.
Like many parents facing a blockade, Astbury Allen had to reconcile the demands of his daughters’ online classes with his job as Chinese director of a marketing and strategy company that helps foreign brands sell in China.
In late September, the government announced that people with expired residence permits could return to China after applying for a visa. Mrs. Astbury Allen hurried to sign up for one in October. But when she arrived at a visa center, the rules had already changed.
China announced on November 4 that it would temporarily suspend the entry of foreigners from Britain, even if they had valid visas or residence permits. He described the change as a “temporary response” as cases of Covid-19 increased in Britain.
The situation left Mrs. Astbury Allen feeling overwhelmed. She worries more about the trauma that this separation is causing her daughters.
Livia, 12, became depressed and hid under the blanket, refusing to leave the room for three days. When Mae, her generally cheerful 7-year-old son, saw her mother crying last month, she was very upset and moved, Astbury Allen said.
“I said, ‘Do you miss your dad, dear?” said Mrs. Astbury Allen. “And she said, ‘Yes,’ and I said, ‘It’s okay. We miss him too. ‘”
Elsie Chen , Coral Yang and Claire Fu contributed research.