The Chinese government has announced it will lift a mandatory quarantine for international visitors on January 8, 2023, ending one of the world's longest running COVID-related restrictions.

Passengers arriving from abroad will still have to present a negative PCR test taken less than 48 hours before departure, except for visitors from Taiwan (who will have 72 hours before departure to do the test) and Hong Kong (seven days). The current regime requires all arriving passengers to quarantine for five days in a government-selected hotel and for a further three days at home, which is already a significant relaxation compared to earlier restrictions. At one point, China required all visitors to quarantine for 21 days.

However, the authorities have not announced any changes to existing rules for visas, the issuance of which, including for tourists, has for the most part been suspended since late March 2020. As such, the relaxed rules will affect only a select group of international travellers, including those travelling for business, study, or family reunions, as well as Chinese nationals returning from abroad.

The government has said that outbound tourism from China, which has been almost completely suspended, would be restored "in an orderly manner". Beijing banned all overseas travel in late January 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was already widespread in China but not yet of a major concern in other countries.

The decision to lift the quarantine comes after China removed most domestic COVID-related restrictions in a rapid reversal of its previous policy, which strove to achieve zero infections. However, the removal of the restrictions has since sparked a fresh wave of Covid cases. While China has greatly reduced the extent of testing and reliable reporting, estimates cited by the Financial Times say that as many as 250 million people may have been infected in the first 20 days of December 2022. The surge has prompted the governments of Japan and Taiwan to impose a negative test requirement on all passengers arriving from China, further mitigating the impact of China's reopening. The United States is reportedly also considering imposing restrictions on passengers from China.

Beijing said the lifting of the quarantine would be followed by changes to the number of flight permits issued to international carriers but did not offer any details. Currently, airlines are restricted to a small number of flights and have to serve secondary cities as main gateways remain off-limits. They also face permit suspensions if a substantial number of passengers test positive on arrival in China.

The ch-aviation capacities module shows that in the week starting January 2, China will see 160,052 scheduled international departure seats, excluding the Special Administrative Regions of Macau and Hong Kong. The routes are primarily served by Chinese airlines: Air China, China Southern Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, and Xiamen Airlines between them have a 34.28% market share by scheduled capacity.