Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan leave China alone in its ‘Covid zero’ isolation

East Asia’s reopening has barely been reported in a land where Xi Jinping’s coronavirus policy has been elevated to dogma.

A youngster is tested for Covid-19 in Chengdu, in China's southwestern Sichuan province, this week: Picture: AFP

Nothing says welcome back to Taiwan in 2022 like spitting in a jar for a Covid test.

After that, two ladies spray you with disinfectant in the airport taxi queue. They also squirt your bags, which have already been doused in an anti-Covid potion.

I’ve been through this routine five times now, most recently this week after returning from Singapore, a place that moved on from all this Covid theatre long ago.

Taiwan’s disinfectant rigmarole was novel when I moved here just over a year ago. Now it’s absurd. Almost only one other place in the world has a quarantine set-up for international arrivals as Taiwan still does: the communist party-ruled People’s Republic of China.

On Thursday, while I was once again confined to my apartment for another four-day stint, the Taiwanese government announced that if “everything is under control” they will end quarantine on October 13. Thank goodness.

Much of Taiwan’s Covid story has been impressive, but this change is long overdue.

Back in January Taiwan’s former vice-president Chen Chien-jen, a Johns Hopkins-trained epidemiologist, told me that by “June or July” Taiwan could join Australia, Europe and North America in “turning down our worry about Covid-19”.

“Covid is not the Covid of before. We already have good defences,” said Professor Chen, the embodiment of the best of Taiwan’s political system.

Weeks later, Taiwan’s health minister said something similar, but the opening date has crept back further and further into 2022.

The stated reason for Taiwan’s extreme caution has been new Covid strands. Privately, government officials blame politics.

Public sentiment is mixed. Many Taiwanese are relaxed about Covid now that they are vaccinated, but others still speak about it in fearful tones.

A month ago, a contact told me he hoped we could soon catch up for lunch or dinner. Why not now? “My wife won’t let me,” he explained. “Not with BA.5 spreading.”

There is an unflattering backstory to Taiwan’s new quarantine announcement.

The decision came two days after Hong Kong’s chief executive John Lee said that – having secured Beijing’s blessing – the city would soon scrap its quarantine requirements for international arrivals.

It would have been an appalling look for Taiwan if Hong Kong ended compulsory quarantine before it did, leaving Taipei in a club with Beijing. Clearly many in Tsai Ing-wen’s government agreed. Within 48 hours of Hong Kong’s announcement, Taiwan said it was doing the same.

Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida then confirmed his borders would be fully opened by October 11 – just in time for this year’s ski season. Tokyo had already ended quarantine requirements more than six months ago.

South Korea, the region’s most open state, has been welcoming vaccinated tourists without any quarantine requirements since April.

East Asia’s reopening has barely been reported in China, where President Xi Jinping’s “Covid zero” policy has been elevated to dogma. Beijing presents its approach as the most successful in the world, even as surveys show its ideological approach has led to plunging sentiment among one of its previous core backers: the international business community.

Chinese doctors questioning the approach are censored. People who advocate for any adjustment are hounded online as members of the “lying flat” faction – a term of disparagement.

The world outside the mainland is presented as a place of great danger. Days after Hong Kong’s announcement, one of China’s most popular news websites, Guancha, published a long feature by one of its contributors about his terrifying experience getting Covid in the city’s “sixth wave”.

By October 16, when the Chinese Communist Party gathers in Beijing to anoint Xi as leader for another five years, only North Korea will have a closed-door ­approach anything like its own.

And for all the flurry of openings, there’s no sign China will be dismantling its Covid fortress and rejoining the world. For now, China’s 1.4 billion people can only dream of spitting into a plastic jar after a trip overseas.