COVID-19, Tourism, and China: Seeking Certainties in Uncertain Times

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has been going on for over 3 years. There is no clear sign that different variants of coronavirus will disappear any time soon although majority of the countries in the world, including China, have removed their stringent pandemic control policies. For the time being, China has abolished its zero-COVID policy but has seen soaring cases of daily infections. The world is far from safe to travel and it is likely the virus will be co-habituating with human beings. Tourism is among the most damaged industries during the pandemic. In the past 3 years, tourism was mostly subjugated to the pandemic situations in different countries. While international tourism already experienced a complete halt due to closure of country borders, China still witnessed a sound scale of domestic tourism in 2021, when the pandemic was under effective control. Globally, in early 2022, most countries had relaxed COVID-control measures and travel restrictions, thus seeing a gradual slow recovery of tourism activities. China, instead, saw itself on a rather unique and bumpy path in its combat with the coronavirus. In April 2022, lockdowns in Shanghai, China’s largest city and one of the economic powerhouses, proved to be most disruptive to people’s life and economic activities. Starting from November 2022, with the new Omicron variants’ exceptionally high transmissibility, it became increasingly difficult to exercise strict ‘zero-COVID’ control, eventually leading to the authorities’ renouncing the policy in mid-December 2022. Not surprisingly, after the relaxation of the COVID control, infection cases were immediately on the rise. The year of 2023 seems to be full of uncertainties with regard to the COVID-19. We are yet to see how COVID-19 further evolves in China and globally. However, in the past 3 years, different industry sectors developed their coping strategies and resilience toward the pandemic and researchers also worked to explore effective industry recovery strategies and solutions (Huang & Wang, 2023). Somehow, some certainties could be sought in these uncertain times. This editorial paper thus aims to provide some observations and analysis of the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on China tourism, discuss the trends of China tourism in the COVID new normal era, and introduce JCTR’s special issue ‘Tourism recovery under COVID-19: Experiences from China.’