Chris Igwe, the experienced international cross-border retail advisor highlights below just how the Chinese market is operating now that things are beginning to return to something resembling normal.
Internally China had good control of the Covid-19 virus, with very small number of new cases having been reported. The focus for the virus control now shifted to the prevention of imported cases and asymptomatic infection cases.
Most of the businesses are back to normal, however we still follow very strict virus control measures from the government and it is still highly recommended for everyone to wear masks, do not go to big gatherings, wash their hands and reduce the time they stay outside etc.
Domestic travelling is gradually returning to normal, but still not in its full run yet for flight and trains due to the reason that government is still deliberately trying to control the people who travel to avoid potential increase of the spreading of the virus. If the travel cannot be avoided, then the procedures for heath situation follow up is very strict. People need to go wear masks, do a temperature test and they need to fill in your record in the system for where you have been in the past 14 days by scanning a QR code wherever you go, so the government can easily chase your personal file to take immediate action if anything unexpected happened.
For big events, we were told all big events like marathons etc will be started from November. For tourist sites business, a lot of sites were open to the public from the end of March, but people were still worried to travel out. In order to stimulate the tourism business, a lot of sites now offer free tickets to encourage people to visit. I visited on of the most famous tourist side called “ Lijiang “ in early April, it was so quiet that over 60-70 per cent of the stores inside the tourist sites were not opened due to the reason that there is no traveller coming now. But overall, government is expecting there will be a “strong revenge “on travelling shortly in domestic market as people have been kept at home for too long.
On the retail side, more and more stores opened from the beginning of March, and by the end of the month, most of the stores were reopened.
