Keeping the borders closed may make it easier to govern China near-term, but the broader consequences would be tragic and potentially dangerous.
A lone traveler at Beijing Daxing International Airport, November 2020. Credit: Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo
For the last sixteen months, the world’s most populous country has kept its borders almost entirely closed. Visitors can usually enter China only for specific “business” purposes, and if they have received a Chinese vaccine. Students, non-essential workers, and family members have seen their visas rejected. Those who get approval must submit to a hotel quarantine lasting 14 to 21 days — plus humiliating, medically unnecessary, weekly anal swabs. Unsurprisingly, the flow of foreign visito
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