Editor’s Note for Tuesday, October 18, 2022
A note for Access newsletter readers from Jeremy Goldkorn.
My thoughts today:
Is there an offramp from COVID zero? The rhetoric from Xí Jìnpíng 习近平 and his Communist Party’s congress so far has indicated that there will be no change to the country’s onerous pandemic restrictions.
But perhaps there is something slightly different going on: According to The Paper, a media outlet controlled by Shanghai’s Communist Party branch, the country’s major airlines will resume flying to various international destinations, including Rome, Tokyo, Jakarta, Dubai, Manila, and Bangkok, among other destinations at the end of the month.
But don’t get too excited: “These moves will mainly cater to demand for business travel and don’t augur the resumption of large-scale international tourism,” according to a travel industry expert cited by Caixin.
Our word of the day is consul general (总领事 zǒng lǐngshì).
—Jeremy Goldkorn, Editor-in-Chief
