When will China reopen its borders? Will we be able to travel to China again this year?

hi there welcome to this week's pascal's china lens we're going to talk about when china will reopen a question that many people in the business world but also students have on their mind when can we go back to china so i'm going to give you some context and my prediction on when i think it's going to happen but before i do that i want to actually talk about the question i raised at my previous video on china's main strengths because a lot of people wrote in the comments what they believe china's main strength is but the question i actually asked was what's the title of my book i wrote a new book and that new book has one title has one word in there that is a strength of china that i believe is really important to talk about because i wrote a 400 page book just about that and so lots of people wrote lots of things so i want to share that so i've put the list from from 10 10 comments uh people 10 people 10 people that said the same thing up to zero and what you can see is that culture is the number one most people believe on my channel that the main strength of china is their culture but also that i would have written a book about culture and then you see things like effective government i wasn't number two you see work hard work ethic and chinese are really hard workers the resilience of chinese this is all about the people it's about the energy it's about what people are doing but it's also about the system and so the question is what did i write my book about now it was not an easy answer and maybe people said hope and that's because i in the video emphasize the fact that i believe hope is so important unfortunately the book is not about hope i do write about hope in my book i write about all these things on this list in my book but the main topic i write about is not even in the top 10 list but it is in the list and the reason i write about it is because it's so important it's so important because i believe that's the word that actually creates all the tensions we have today when it comes to china and that word is trust so my book is about trust and i've been thinking for a whole year and been writing for a whole year about trust and the question is why do i want to write about trust well the main reason is because i don't believe unless people start trusting china and chinese more than they do today anything we talk about about china is not going to have this effect and whether it's innovation whether it's technology whether it's governance system whether it's the the business models or whatever we want to talk about unless people start trusting china more it's really hard now why do i think this is important is because this is what i think is a topic of today now there's three people on the channel that actually got it right there's maria there's winningham and there's somebody called red tomato i guess that's not the real name his real name or her real name but i really want to thank you three uh for guessing it right and indeed my book is about trust and i thank you for your comments uh you're all three gonna get a free book from me uh that's for sure just need to communicate with me on my channel you can do that or on my website and the reason i wrote about trust and that's what they also say is because this is very important inside china and so the trust barometer is something that just came out from edelman and every year edelman gives a trust barometer and this year it's very clear that chinese trust their government like nine out of 10 people 91 while in the us it's like 4 40 or 39 and if you look at just uh the netherlands or germany countries like belgium where i'm i live in well you see that just over the past year from 22 to 2021 it's actually gone down with 10 points or 12 points in germany us was down with three points so people trust their government ever less less and less while we in in belgium actually have that distrust in our own government then it's also logically in my view that we have a distrust in something that's far away and unknown and culturally and ideologically different like china and that's why i wrote this book about trust now the challenge with writing a book about trust is that how do you write a book about the real issue on trust and how chinese trust chinese and how chinese trust the world and how chinese look at trust knowing the fact that you're not really trusting the country or maybe not 100 and so my aim and my audience for this book is really people anyone who's kind of likes china or or has questions about china or wants to know more about china but has somewhere in the back of their minds in the back of their head some idea like yeah can we really trust china and so i wanted to answer that question so how do you do that because if you say well let's trust china as a title then everybody would say yeah sure i'm not going to be interested in reading that so i had to think about a title and so i took a title that is a little bit controversial but that i hope many people will at least look at the cover look at the back and try to understand what it's about and that title is can we trust china now the question is who's we we can be anyone as long as you're interested in understanding more about how chinese trust each other within their circles of trust and how they look at the world and so this is actually just like my video channel a chinese lens on the world related to trust i hope you will all like it you can get the book in pre-sale on can we trust china.com very soon on pascalcopens.com but that's not important what's important is that you actually believe and want to stay in dialogue with me in the comments or what you think whether trust is actually the number key point for the world to understand china in order to understand the stories that china is telling to the world now i'm going to continue it now with my video and this is all going to be about when china will reopen [Music] many people have been asking me recently when is china going to reopen people want to make plans for 2022 or maybe they should wait until 2023 to think about traveling to china whether it's for business or for tourism so i'll try and give you an answer what my prediction would be or expectation of when i think china would reopen now if we look at the past two years and china has been almost closed up for two years now the borders it's almost in march it will be two years and wuhan that's where it all started that gold closed just two years ago today almost and so in 27th of january 2020 wuhan was closed and they were in complete lockdown and they went in lockdown for 77 days later on in march it was all the borders closed for the rest of the world and since then china has had almost a zero tolerance policy what it means is that as soon as there are certain infections happening in certain cities that they will immediately put the city in lockdown and we've seen this in many cities throughout china and the most recent one big one was in xi'an where 13 million people got put in lockdown for more than 10 days because there was like 200 or less than 200 infections that's incredible i mean we have like 2 000 or 20 000 in belgium every single day now but that was the policy and they've held that policy for two years now and the problem with that is of course the quarantine if you want to travel to china if you're chinese it's a little bit easier but if you're not chinese and you have a business to do i mean you have a working permit you still can go to china but you have the quarantine two weeks three weeks depending on the situation even athletes today for the winter olympics they have to go into quarantine and if they aren't vaccinated completely it's three weeks of quarantine i mean this is pretty tough but the reality is that china because of this locking up the country for two years has bought a lot of time it means that china was able for two years to kept going and operate as if everything was normal while the rest of the world for two years have been battling the pandemic more than anywhere else in the anywhere else in china now what happened is that this has created a huge challenge for china and although we always say yeah china wants to lock up because they want to go back to being contained themselves and and being on themselves the reality is that this was very new for china as well and so the main thing is that they had no blueprint and although we often say china did crazy things and they're doing it because they want to be on their own reality is that nobody knew how to deal with a pandemic like this china had some knowledge from sars and so what they did is they created this blueprint for themselves most of the world didn't follow that blueprint but later on had to follow some of the measures as well because they knew or figured out that was the only way to contain the virus in some fashion now one of the big challenges china had and not many people are talking about this for the past two years it's actually the fact that doing business in china is all about face to face it's about meeting people and now suddenly keeping your distance having to do zoom calls or online calls i mean not being able to travel this for a business country like china where everything is about business very often i mean this is a huge challenge much more than it is in many other countries that don't have this culture of having to meet face to face in order to actually trust each other and so this was a huge disruption but china did it this was the challenge they coped with now indirectly the result of it is that they also got a lot of global attention and that wasn't very good attention it was real anger from the rest of the world because of the virus that came out of wuhan as at first but also because of the way that china communicated with the world claiming they can know it better and they do it differently and they don't have to open up and they can do whatever they want in their way and so the world got very upset but also people living in china the expats foreigners living in china they got really tired because many of them and that was a huge challenge we're not able to travel for one or two years to their family overseas because every time they come back they have to stay in quarantine i mean even for kids going to school i mean this is terrible because that is their social fabric or social connection that they need to keep to keep actually being active and happy in china as well so what you saw is lots of foreigners starting to consider to move back to the us to europe and leave china because it's no fun to stay in an environment that is completely locked up and where you can't you have your freedom within china but basically you don't see the people that you actually care about and then the thing is that china because of this lock up this lockdown of the whole country the closing of the borders has not really created or hurt i mean immunity i mean in a way it's it's good because there's no virus or very little virus or going around in china but that also means that people only can get immunity because of due to the vaccine and not from natural getting the virus i mean it's a good and a bad thing because you don't want many people to die and get of course the virus in itself and maybe this is something that china as a choice made that they would not have this immunity but the problem is because of that letting go of the zero tolerance policy is much more difficult for china than any other country because they have zero immunity the only immunity they have is the vaccinations and then the question is how good are these vaccines for omicron for example so that is really becoming the new normal of china and china got used to be isolated and on their own but it's not really fun but at the same time they feel like they at least for two years got to do their business as usual while the rest of the world was coping with the pandemic so they actually gained two years on the rest of the world but they also had to deal with all the challenges because of that now the opportunity that was created because of it is of course the freedom for two years people could almost do whatever they wanted i mean specifically after wuhan got out of their lockdowns again i mean most people were traveling i mean they were still cautious and and keeping their distance and of course you have to wash your hands and all the things that we did in the west but they got freedom they could travel wherever they go most of the times they could do business as normal almost and so that is a huge difference with the west where most countries anywhere in the world they went from one wave to the other from one lockdown to the other from one measure to the other i mean i live in belgium i mean we're going crazy about what is it now what can we do or can we not do and so this is a big difference now the other thing is because of this two years of closing the country china's economy really blossomed it continued to grow i mean for the first quarter when they went in serious lockdown it went down almost seven percent but then afterwards the gdp started growing really in 2020 it was uh almost a little bit over two percent 2021 we're talking about 8.1 percent and some people will say in the media yeah but the last quarter it's only at four percent but yeah they forget to compare that with the six point four percent of the quarter the fourth quarter of 2020 and so on average actually over those two years china in that fourth quarter grew more than five percent and the expectation for 2022 is that china will grow somewhere between five and six percent probably 5.2 5.3 i mean there's very few economies that can do that i mean we will do it because we had no growth just previous years or very little and so growing fast now is just to recover from the downside we had before but china kept up and so this is a huge opportunity in economic terms you could say that china gained two years on the rest of the world but the most important in my view from the opportunity point of view is that they created unity solidarity they were helping each other they started feeling that they did a better job than the rest of the world and the reason they did it is because they got along and they figured out if we collectively tried to contain the virus by doing everything we can against it have the zero tolerance policy and accept the fact that we have to go in strict lockdowns when needed we are getting closer to each other and so it's like the civilization of china of 2500 years came awake because of the pandemic and so that has never been stronger and you see it in the trust levels very very much china today is at more than 90 percent of the people are trusting the government are trusting what chinese leaderships have done to contain the virus and that compared with the us which is a 39 percent trust in the government is very clear that in china people trust the government twice as much as they do in most countries in the west and countries like netherlands belgium germany i mean they went real down on the barometer of edelman that does this every year a trust barometer reel down in trust in the government and so this tells you something about the difference between china and the rest of the world specifically the west that has very very little trust into the government into the leadership and that has something to do with the pandemic and now the question is how will china loosen up and open up again and so i think 2022 is a year where china is extremely hopeful because they feel they did a better job than anyone else we can disagree or agree on that but the reality is this is how many chinese feel and that's a good start of a new normal post-pandemic now the other thing is that there's a lot of pressure lately to actually open up for china so that's why i think 2022 we're going to see some real announcements why is that i mean we saw in xi'an there were some problems with people not getting food when there was lockdowns of 13 million people and so we could really see that the chinese people feel that it's about time to start reopening up because we can't deal with another strict lockdown and this zero tolerance policy is starting to become difficult for some of us we want to get back to normal this is what you see now compared with the rest of the world i mean there's no comparison i mean when we see specifically in belgium in brussels every day there's there's like manifestations and and and revolution almost about the measures and that they want to stop i mean there's nothing compared to china i mean china people are still very much willing to actually comply with all the measures and and go with go through with it but still you feel that there's a social unrest starting very very little and then also from a business perspective the big issue is cross-border trade all the logistics that has to come inside china and outside china i mean they got stuck at the border there's the customs that is holding everything specifically frozen foods and stuff other stuff like that and so they have a problem in china that is delaying deliveries on both sides in and out china and that's not good for a country that has been doing so well on exports they've been growing experts crazily in 2021 and so china is still very much export dependent and so that is a problem as well and the world is starting to look for alternatives if the customs of china are going to keep that zero tolerance policy now what you also see from an international point of view is that the world is back simple the world they're starting to allow travel everywhere the us you can travel to the u.s within europe you can travel to most places i mean the world is starting to go back and there's more and more barometers where they say if the virus is is at that stage then you can do this and that and that which means we're looking at a system to actually be able to have our lives living with the pandemic and so we have started to come back and that means that the rest of the world has now decided that it's time for this pandemic to end i mean the virus doesn't listen to the world but reality is we're starting to accept that we have to live with this virus and then of course what you see recently is that the zero tolerance policy countries or zero covet countries like new zealand and australia the islands mainly that were locked up as well they closed their border as well very strict closing well they have started to open up as well you see singapore you see thailand everybody's loosening up all their agreements and quarantine rules to get into the country and so china somehow will be the last man standing to figure out when they will actually open up the borders so i believe there's a real pressure and momentum building up internally and externally for china to start making decisions i think china is back the only question is when will they announce that they will be back and when will they actually start doing it but i think mentally i mean just in their mind china has already made up their mind that's my view that 2022 that's the moment they need to get back on the world stage now if you look at the statements to get an idea on what's happening you can look at some of the top epidemiologists like uh zhang hongdae the anthony fauci of of china and he clearly said in june last year already that once everybody once there's hurt immunity and that everybody's vaccinated in china and the rest of the world is starting to get vaccinated as well specifically the western world i mean they should open up and so already almost eight months ago there were signs the first signs that china is starting to think about opening up but then specifically in december uh zhong nang shan one of the top epidemiologists in in china he said that with the vaccination level that china had and at that point it was about 75 percent of the population that was fully vaccinated now we're talking about 86 percent of this fully vaccinated 90 that has a first vaccination of the whole population i mean this is this is crazy it it's actually one of the top countries being vaccinated we don't talk often about that but he said that when everybody is vaccinated at 85 percent which is today then china should loosen up he he expected by december january that china could actually start slowly opening up certain things now it doesn't happen that quickly because there's other things happening we'll talk about that in a minute but the reality is that the virologists or the epidemiologist they are saying it's kind of time to start thinking about opening up and this is the interesting thing in the west most of the virologists the epidemiologist what they are saying is just the opposite they're saying we should have more measures we should actually do more lockdowns we should actually be more careful while in china it's the politicians that say we should be very careful and it's actually the virologists that say maybe it's time to open up very interesting to see the opposite direction of both of these experts and then when you think about tourism that's also interesting the founder or the chairman of c-trip the biggest travel agency in china number two in the world trip.com is more well known as a brand outside china james leon what he said is that he expects china by this summer 2022 to actually open up for tourism he's saying the reason is simple by march may april most of the asian countries will have to open up for tourism and so you can expect like three four months later that china will also open up because if asia opens up then it's really hard for china not to open up i think he's a little optimistic but it's a good sign that china wants to open up and then if you look at the national international news like jefferies what you see is that many many people are talking about it's not going to happen in 2022 and most of my friends foreign friends living in china or outside china say china is not going to obviously open up this year and specifically they refer to the national party congress in november where they say yeah i mean before xi jinping gets its third term china's not going to open up i would disagree with that i believe china will look at the data china will look at the virus they will look at what's happening outside china and they also understand that this is hurting the economy in some fashion they took an advantage for two years but now it's time to get back so i don't think that will be the case but we'll see now if you look at the data i mean what's very clear if you look at project projections or forecasts about the the covet 19 what you see is that normally let's hope that's the case by may end of may the death rate of the virus of covet 19 would go slowly to zero meaning it's going to flatten that curve and the other thing that we see often in the west as well is that the hospital admissions and the intention intensive care is really going with the waves but that somewhere in may unless there's a new wave coming up with a new variant it should actually die as well and so these are the two big things because people dying that's really the main issue that's what you don't want people getting sick is not the big issue it's because that's like with the flu the problem is more if they die and the problem if they get really sick and then you also have to take care of the hospitals from an admission point of view and if you don't have enough beds or enough people that can care for those people um doctors and nurses then you have another problem and so those two things from a forecast point of view unless there is another variant like a delta that comes back then it doesn't look that this will be a big problem and then the vaccination level i mean in the western countries in china we're all aiming at 50 60 70 in belgium it's more than 80 percent uh so countries in western europe that are doing very well they're getting this hurt immunity specifically against delta for omicron it's not so clear but that's an interesting talk about omicron because that started in south africa and when it started many a few months ago then everybody was talking about south africa like whoa another variant and this is going to kill the world and it's going to be the worst one of all and the bad news from south africa was something that we immediately distributed and told to everyone now two months later in south africa it's really tempering down and the curve is flattening is actually going to zero specifically on people dying from omicron there's almost none if you look at all the deaths in south africa there's like 300 000 that's a lot of people that died but most of that 50 is from delta and omicron is only three percent and so when they told the whole world that actually much of this virus omicron is not making people die it's it's actually making people sick but they're not dying of it it's going to become epidemic like a flu then the world didn't believe it and so i think this is interesting because when countries like south africa or china or countries that are far away and with different type of of of leadership when they say that there's bad news everybody believes it in self-sets sentence everywhere throughout the media when there's good news people don't trust it and so there's something to think about now i believe that we are reaching a peak now i'm no virologist so i have no idea so i i'm basing my this on on other people's uh data but it looks like let's hope for it that by the end of may maybe this omicron is just going to become a normal flu we're all going to get vaccinated and specifically in west europe in america north america and hopefully very soon the rest of the world and we start to reach that peak now that will be the decision for china to decide how and when to open up if that happens end of may i think i believe china will take that next step very quickly now how are they going to reopen up is another question that people are asking well i think they got like two years at least one year of preparation time you see it of the number of of quarantine places and covets hospitals that have been built i mean they've been building like crazy infrastructure capacity also for nursing personnel and so on and so this is something we haven't done in belgium and i've never really understood it i mean for two years we had time to build capacity for two years we had time to actually train nurses to help for covet but because we knew maybe that in two years it's going to end up we decided not to do it why not build the capacity why not train medical staff and if you don't use it then you write it off that would be the logical thing this is how china thinks this is not how a country where i live in in belgium things but yeah the politicians must have certain reason i guess now i think the the real challenge for china to reopen up will be social unrest what it means is that so far china has been free and they've been in lockdown in certain places from certain times for a week or two weeks and and that's been unfortunate and not nice and they had to do testing on millions of people at the time and people don't like that but at the same time because they were free it was kind of okay now the question is if they open up and suddenly lots of people get sick and people die i mean how are they going to deal with that so china will have to communicate very well to the population how they're going to open up and only because of that i believe they need at least three to six months to prepare for that communication towards their own population and figuring out how to structure it all but they've had two years to prepare so let's hope they've already done that part now who's going to be able to access china's borders first i mean it's clearly going to be students who have to study because china wants to attract foreign talent but also foreign experts will be able to get into china of course it's going to be business people specifically for the multinational companies uh not having to do quarantine and then other business people and the last on the list will probably be the tourists people just wanting to visit china now if james young from sea trip says it's going to be summer for tourists it would directly mean that business people and students would already be able to enter in q2 not sure i think james is wrong for at least a quarter but i don't know we'll see i mean he has no more insights than i do but it could also be an opportunity for china because for two years they've actually taken a lead on the world because the world was busy with the pandemic and closed off much of its factories and production while china its factories were running double time were going crazy there was lots of opportunity they've created a lot of innovation which we don't talk about much anymore but that opportunity unless they start opening up unless they do it in a good way and they do it fast it's actually going to start having the opposite effect if they wait too long and so they've taken that two years lead but they could lose some of that if they wait too long to open up and so i believe the rest of the world will start decoupling more from china if china doesn't open up and so there's a real incentive to do it and so i think they will very soon i think it's very well planned it's going to be very well planned i mean that's how you know china they're going to say this this this this not everybody's going to be happy it's going to be way too slow compared to what we did in the west but at least it's going to be planned and probably by 2023 tourism will be back and everything will be normal now what we can also look at is the events of 2022 to understand when china would take that decision i mean clearly not in the first quarter that is now because of the winter olympics i mean they don't want to take any risk on the winter olympics when the whole world is watching china at the same time there's the national people's congress in march i mean that's also such a big event and they don't want any bad publicity at that time as well there's the hong kong elections i mean there's lots of things so q1 definitely no opening up i don't even think they're going to have a statement but they could do that in q1 i think the statement of opening up will probably come in q2 there's nothing really much important happening in q2 when it comes to china most important one is the 16.1

countries uh plus one countries this is like the east european and central european countries that are and the plus one is china and it used to be uh 17 plus one with greece joining but then lithuania actually were left and so right now it's 16.1 again and this is important but china has been losing some of its connection and soft power into the 16.1 countries in eastern and central europe and so i'm not so sure opening up will be needed last year did xi jinping did a virtual summit as well so there's no need to travel there the g7 the nato i mean china has nothing to do with that so q2 doesn't look like there's anything happening that needs to make a decision either to open up or not open up so a good time for making a statement i think q3 is important because in q3 there's the asian games we always talk about the winter olympics but we forget that for china in september this year there's actually going to be the big asian games in hangzhou where alibaba is and so this is a major event so china could be waiting until after the games just like the winter games to be sure and and safe that actually the games will be able to happen clearly without any problems or they could ask anybody with a ticket for the game to actually open to actually come to china without any props that's also possible we don't know but the games is important uh the united nations the brics so brazil russia india china and south africa these countries the emerging countries of the world big summits happening and i think xi jinping might want to go there he might want to go to tell everybody china's back we're back on that world stage and if he travels then basically he also needs to open the borders for anybody coming in china maybe not for everyone but at least for business people and students and so on so i think q3 could actually be the opening up moment of china that would be a positive thinking now many people in the west say it's going to be q4 or maybe 2023 because there's the national party congress the communist party national congress uh and that for sure it's where xi jinping will probably get his third term and that means that there's such an importance just like the one the national people's congress in march that china will not open up until after that congress so that means we have to wait until the end of november until december before china opens up so logically it will be 2023. that's what many people say there's also the asian games asian summit asean which is all most of the asian countries countries in asia there's the 50 years anniversary between germany and china there's the us midterms i mean there's a lot of things happening at that point the g20 the cop27 so there's a lot of things summits in q4 so my feeling personally is that i don't see why xi jinping would want to wait until after the nationals party congress because i mean he's going to be re-elected anyway so what's the what's the point what's what's what's the issue too i think that is actually a good moment end of q3 october maybe after the october holidays or in q4 early q4 to actually go and be on all these summits that are so important so my guess is somewhere october but i could be wrong now is it going to be about pr or control and you see in the media the two stories most people in international media are talking about yes it's about control it's about making sure that they can just have that internal circulation happening and have the internal country be strong and they don't care about the world and and so right now it's all about waiting for that national party congress i disagree i think it's going to be about pr what it means is china and xi jinping and most of the leaders will want to use the opening up of china to actually show we're back on that stage we're back china's back simple and so the first signs that you can see of this happening is that the land borders are starting to reopen in december you could see with hong kong that they've actually coordinated the health qr codes with china so that hong kong hong kongers could go and travel to china that's the first land border and so if they abide according to the same who ql qr health code they're part of the china regulation and measures and they don't need to go into quarantine so that's the first sign this is happening you see also on economic side like vietnam the country said really they had to open up because there were lots of problems on the border i mean trucks were stuck the whole time because there was an outbreak just across the border in china and so china was very concerned but they opened up vietnam borders again specifically for logistics and tra and and and business which means that when countries of economic importance with china another positive with china actually ask china to open up more china's actually accommodating they're answering that request so that tells me that china is going to start to reopen but what's also interesting if we look at last month in december there's this five-year plan the the 14-5 year plan that was decided in march last year is now being executed and there's more and more industries setting out their plans for the future and when we look at the tourism industry it's very clear just last month that they said we want to open up now for inbound tourism and we want to open up and in chinese it's on the on the chinese government site that really says it's about the promotion of actions in a timely manner of course we have to take care of covet and we have to see how it all goes with the data but we want to do this because we have a big five-year plan for inbound tourism we really want to introduce policies that support this tourism we want to have multilingual tour guides we really want to take the measures for high quality development of inbound tourism this is what it says on the chinese government site and so from december on china has changed that shift shifted that mindset to say we now for the next five years we need to focus on tourism inbound and outbound and that means the borders have to open up now do they have to open up quickly maybe not but if they wait another year that five-year plan might be very difficult to achieve and so i believe personally that china could reopen in q3 it could be late q3 it could be early q4 now many people say don't expect china to open up before 2023 maybe they will be right this is just a personal opinion i have no idea nobody knows i'm just looking at science and i'd be interested to know what you think the only thing i believe is that china is now starting to accommodate the wishes look at the world around us and say we've gotten two years of unfair advantage you could call it like that but now we need to go into doing business with the world again and be fair in everything as we had before in 2019 and so i believe china will look at the data they will look at what's happening with covet 19. if there's no big new wave there's no big new variant that is happening and most of the western countries are getting vaccinated slowly i think they're going to start announcing the opening up but more importantly what do you think put it in the comments let me know do you think china will open up in 2022 if they do when do you think why do you think it let's discuss it and maybe you have insights i don't and i wish you all a good 2022 and hope that china will open up this year and see you next week for another pascals china lens [Music]

2022-02-04 11:55

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