China has stopped issuing short-term visas to citizens of Japan and South Korea in response to restrictions imposed by these countries on the Chinese, reports the BBC. Due to the new wave of COVID-19, Korean authorities have stopped issuing tourist visas to Chinese citizens, and Chinese travelers are allowed into Japan only if they have a negative test.
In Beijing, such restrictions were considered discrimination and said they would not resume issuing short-term visas to China for Koreans and Japanese until Japan and South Korea canceled the new rules.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry told the BBC that the country's policy towards Chinese citizens is based on objective information. According to the Korean Agency for Disease Control and Prevention, about a third of travelers arriving from China before the restrictions were introduced were infected with COVID-19.
Currently, Korea only accepts a small number of visitors from China, mostly those who come for diplomatic and business purposes.
Bloomberg notes that the current situation will hit China's hopes for the restoration of tourist flow to the country, which recently opened its borders. Before the pandemic, it was South Korea and Japan that gave the country the largest number of tourists, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. So, in 2018, 4.2 million Koreans and 2.7 million Japanese visited China.
In December, after a series of protests swept the country, China abandoned its "zero tolerance" policy for COVID-19 and lifted all restrictions that had been in place for about three years. After that , a new wave of the epidemic began in the country.
In early January, Bloomberg, citing its own sources, wrote that the United States offered China to organize the supply of coronavirus vaccines, but Beijing refused, insisting that Chinese-made vaccines are effective.