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China defends its retaliation against South Korea, Japan COVID curbs

Business 09:12 11 Jan, 2023
China defends its retaliation against South Korea, Japan COVID curbs

Chinese state media defended on Wednesday the retaliatory measures against South Korea and Japan over their COVID-19 travel curbs as "reasonable", while Chinese tourists decried Seoul's "insulting" treatment on social media, Qazet.az reports.

China re-opened its borders on Sunday after three years of isolation under the world's strictest regime of COVID restrictions, which Beijing abruptly began dismantling in early December after historic protests.

With the virus spreading unchecked among China's 1.4 billion people after the policy U-turn, some foreign governments have raised concerns about the scale and impact of the outbreak, with the World Health Organization saying deaths are underreported.

In a first, China's health authorities - which have been reporting five or fewer deaths a day over the past month, numbers that are inconsistent with the long queues seen at funeral homes - did not report COVID fatalities data on Tuesday.