Hong Kong-China border fully re-opens this week
Testing requirements and daily quotas will be dropped on Monday.
By David Flynn, February 6 2023
The border between Hong Kong and mainland China will fully reopen this week for the first time in three years, reviving the city’s role as the business gateway between the country and the rest of the world.
“From Monday, there will be full resumption of normal travel between Hong Kong and the mainland,” the city’s leader John Lee said in a press briefing Friday alongside with other top officials.
Daily quotas and testing requirements will be dropped and all boundary checkpoints will reopen from next week, Lee said.
The removal of restrictions is a dramatic reversal for a city which isolated itself for most of the pandemic, and comes a day after Lee unveiled a publicity campaign to revive the economy and repair the city’s damaged image.
To bring in much-needed visitors, Hong Kong will give away more than 500,000 air tickets this year.
Life in the city has effectively returned to normal, with only the mandatory wearing of masks a reminder of the Covid Zero era.
The move comes after the resumption of quarantine-free travel between Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland on 8 January 2023.
China reopened its border with Hong Kong in early January in a limited manner, at the same time as it ended quarantine to welcome back visitors from the rest of the world ahead of the start of the Chinese New Year.
High-speed trains are once again running between Hong Kong and mainland China and British Airways and Virgin Atlantic will resume flights to Beijing and Shanghai in the coming months, although Qantas has no plans to return to China at this stage.
Additional reporting by Bloomberg