BEIJING, China
\nPeople in China have reacted with joy and rushed to plan trips overseas after Beijing said it would scrap mandatory Covid quarantine for overseas arrivals that will end almost three years of self-imposed isolation.
\nIn a snap move late on Monday, China said from January 8 inbound travellers would no longer be required to quarantine on arrival in a further unwinding of hardline coronavirus controls that had that torpedoed its economy and sparked nationwide protests.
\nOnline searches for flights abroad surged on the news, with travel platform Tongcheng seeing an 850 percent jump in searches and a ten-fold jump in enquiries about visas, according to state media reports.
\nRival platform Trip.com Group said the volume of searches for popular overseas destinations rose by 10 times year-on-year within half an hour of the announcement.
\nUsers were particularly keen on trips to Macau, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand and South Korea, it added.
\n\u201cI felt like the epidemic is finally over,\u201d said Beijing office worker Fan Chengcheng, 27.
\n \u201cThe travel plans I made three years ago may now become a reality.\u201d
\nShanghai resident Ji Weihe said the move would make China \u201cbenefit the economy, peoples\u2019 lives and their desires to go out and travel\u201d.
\nBut some Chinese may face hurdles when they do go abroad, with Japan announcing that it would require Covid-19 tests on arrival for travellers from mainland China from Friday.
\nRising cases in China, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, were \u201ccausing growing concern in Japan.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BEIJING, China People in China have reacted with joy and rushed to plan trips overseas after Beijing said it would scrap mandatory Covid quarantine for overseas arrivals that will end almost three years of self-imposed isolation. In a snap move late on Monday, China said from January 8 inbound travellers would no longer be required […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":303834,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-303878","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n