2023-08-06 19:01:23
Since the reopening, for the volunteer team of Solidarité Covid – Français de Chine, the analysis of international traffic to China has taken over (among other things) the curation of daily epidemiological data.
The listings of flights authorized by the CAAC were on 4 screens before the reopening, it is now necessary to digitize the tables to make updates and analyze trends by country and by region of the world. And there, we realize that not everyone is in the same boat, far from it. But this time it is not related to China but to the geopolitical / economic tensions that the health crisis has only exacerbated.
Monthly evolution of the number of weekly incoming flights by region / country in Europe. The geographically closest countries are the best off, and there are large disparities from one country to another in the number of flights and the share of flights from Chinese companies.
The whole month of July, We waited for the CAAC flight schedule update, it didn’t come (last update on June 16, then once more on August 6 but with a completely different structure), but it instead there was the report of a meeting of the Central Committee on July 24 with comments on the situation of flights for the week of July 17 to 23, 2023. 3,680 flights to mainland China (+36% compared to compared to our analysis posted on July 2) for that week. 2 graphs are published highlighting the preponderance of Asian destinations with 83.3% of international flights.
The novelty of the report of the central committee is the rate of restoration of flights by country which was not communicated previously.
For Europe, only the UK appears in the ranking of the top 10 (which notably omits certain Asian countries such as Cambodia and Myanmar) with a return to the level of 2019, it is the only country in this case since the levels of traffic recovery oscillate between 40 and 76% for the main destinations. The fault of the persistent tensions with the USA (24 flights, no progress since June), India (still without direct flight and with retaliatory measures since wechat and Alibaba are blocked there), and the problems of issuing visas to the Chinese for Western countries that have persisted since March… During the July 6 webinar, the French ambassador mentioned the difficulty of recruiting agents assigned to the issuance of visas who agree to come to China, this says a lot regarding the attractiveness of the China destination!
No information on the number of tourist visas to China requested (30 million visitors in 2019), visa exemption efforts for certain Asian countries (Singapore, Kazakhstan, in addition to the 144-hour transit pass for 53 countries), but we have information on SAR and Taiwan. The situation is much more complex in Taiwan than in the SARs of Hong Kong and Macao, the France 2 report omitting to say that it is the Chinese from the mainland who represented the vast majority of pre-pandemic visitors and who are still prohibited. entry to Taiwan except the islands in the Taiwan Strait since June 2023.
Tourism rebound in Greater China
Latest nb of visitors report
Pre pandemic level
Recovery rate
source
Taiwan
900 K in 2022
11.8 million in 2019
7.6%
Tourism Bureau. France 2 journal 8/3/2023
Hong Kong SAR
13 million S1 2023
26 million S1 2019
50%
Hong Kong Free Press July 14
Macau SAR
11,645 million S1 2023
20,295 million S1 2019
57%
Trading Economics
The France destination increased to one flight per day per company per destination at the end of June, the supply of flights is no longer in a situation of shortage compared to demand, but reduced due to the difficulty of obtaining a visa, with 35 weekly flights vs 95 in 2019, the recovery rate peaks at 37%.
The congestion does not only affect France with 10 weeks of delay to obtain an RV at the visa service for simple tourists: towards Germany, tourist visa applications were saturated from the beginning of July until the beginning of December, a tense situation too for Italy and Spain, and for the USA, it takes 128 days for B1/B2 visas. The number of passengers over the summer would be half of the pre-pandemic level, while Internet searches for flights from China increased compared to 2019.
In total, international traffic for this week 29 stands at 47.2% of the 2019 level, this compares to an 89% flight recovery rate including domestic flights, and the recovery rate for international is slower. than expected (target was to get to 100% by fall) and still an advantage to Chinese airlines (China Eastern 60-70%, Air China 70% by end of 2023, Spring Airlines established in Singapore to 80% by the end of the year).
Find the unpublished analyzes and the whole history of the pandemic in China as experienced and analyzed by expatriates in the book “Planète Chine Zéro Covid, Trois ans sur Orbite”
https://solidaritecovid.com/actualites-autour-du-livre/
On the site, the Sinofrance interview of July 23, 2023:
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