Mainland Chinese rush to return to Hong Kong, Macau post zero-Covid nears 1 million
- After nearly three years of no domestic travel, hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens are applying for travel permits and documents
- Immigration authority reports growing demand since border restrictions were relaxed in December
Applications were up by 147.6 per cent from before the policy change, according to Liu Haitao, director general of the National Immigration Administration’s department of frontier inspection and management.
Liu told a press conference on Friday that travel demand has been growing since China relaxed its border restrictions in December, with around 998,000 mainland residents applying for travel documents to Hong Kong, Macau or Taiwan, and 353,000 people applying for a new passport.
The relaxation followed a ban of almost three years on domestic travel.
Ray Chui Man-wai, chairman of Kam Kee Holdings, which runs over 40 restaurants in Hong Kong, said they had hired more staff to prepare for an expected influx of mainland visitors over the Lunar New Year holiday.
Ng Kwan-sing, vice-chairman of the Hong Kong Taxi Council, was also expecting the return of mainland visitors to be a boon for the taxi sector, which had been hit hard by the pandemic.
