The world has anticipated China to re-open its border for the past three years, especially after many other countries scrapped their restrictions on international travelers.

Finally, China has re-opened its doors and ready to embrace the world yet again, beginning from January 8, 2023 ― basically, no COVID-19 nucleic acid test and quarantine upon international arrivals.

Good news? Well, only for those countries supporting true scientific spirit and economic insights. For example, Thailand, three Thai Cabinet ministers visited the Bangkok International Airport to welcome 269 passengers from Xiamen, Fujian Province, the first arrivals from China after it prioritized its COVID policy.

Many other Southeast Asian countries, including Vietnam, Malaysia, Maldives, etc., have also expressed their warm welcome to the Chinese tourists. Others, such as New Zealand, Ireland, Egypt, Mexico, etc., have no or very limited requirements for Chinese arrivals.

UN spokesperson for the Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric said on January 10 that "all decisions regarding screening of passengers and so on be taken on scientific grounds and only on scientific grounds."

But ironically, a few countries, including the U.S., Japan, and South Korea, etc., have singled out Chinese travelers and imposed added restrictions on them, requiring PCR tests or even mandatory quarantines.

They claimed by doing so, it would stop any potential new variants that could emerge.

The WHO (World Health Organization) said on January 4 that no new variants of the coronavirus have been found in China in a statement.

The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said on January 3 that the variants circulating in China have already been circulating in the EU, and are not challenging for the EU citizens.

Gisaid, a global data science initiative, which has been tracking and sharing changes in the coronavirus and has sequenced 14.4 million genomes from 215 countries and regions, has also confirmed in late December that the latest data from China shows no new COVID-19 variant has emerged in the country.

U.S. health expert, Dr. Chris Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, said the risk of a dangerous new COVID variant in China is "quite low."

Obviously, the facts speak louder.

According to the China CDC, Omicron BA.5.2 and BF.7, both imported, are the main variants circulating in the country.

While some recent variants, including XBB.1.5, BQ.1.1, etc., rampant in the U.S. and Japan, are spreading rapidly throughout many other countries.

Then, why is there so much hysteria over "China's surge of cases is posing a threat to the world," "China's dynamic zero-COVID is a failure," "China is in a chaos after the new policy"...?

Damned if you do and damned if you don't, is the perfect summary of the political farce against China from certain Western politicians and media outlets.

In their voices or writings, China is forever the "threat," be it the dynamic zero-COVID policy, or the latest loosening of COVID control measures, be it at the initial stage when the Chinese around the world bought masks to help their relatives back home, or later when China literally supplied the whole world with PPEs including masks, be it when China did not yet develop its own vaccines, or later when China supplied 153 countries and 15 international organizations with 2.2 billion doses of vaccines.

For them, the political agenda runs much higher than scientific spirit. Weaponizing the pandemic is just a chapter from their long script.

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