China’s Travel Code to be Obsolete from Midnight

By Lars James Hamer, December 12, 2022

At midnight on December 12, 2022, China’s Travel Code (通信行程卡) announced on their official WeChat page that from the following day (December 13), they will suspend operations indefinitely.

The official statement reads:

“To thoroughly implement the decision-making deployment of the Party Central Committee and the State Council on further optimizing the prevention and control measures of COVID-19, and scientifically and accurately implement prevention and control work, according to the relevant requirements of the comprehensive group of the joint prevention and control mechanism of the State Council, the Travel Code will officially stop service from midnight on December 13.
“Travel Code inquiry channels such as text messages, web pages, WeChat and Alipay mini-programs and APPs will all go offline simultaneously.”

The Travel Code was previously used to inform venues, such as public places, landmarks, eateries and venues whether someone had traveled to a high-risk area over the last seven days.

Venues could refuse entry based on one’s travel history.

The code previously showed a person’s travel history over the last 14 days and had a star function, which meant that although the person hadn’t been to a high-risk area, they had been in a city that had such areas.

At the time it was possible to travel if you had a star on your code but there were cases where hotels would refuse entry to any person who had the dreaded asterisk.

November and December have been months of huge changes in relation to China’s domestic handling of COVID-19.

It all started on November 30, when Guangzhou was one of the first cities in the country to essentially remove all COVID-19 testing sites and temporary control areas.

The National Health Commission announced nine new measures for handling outbreaks just days later.

Measures included removing the requirement to scan health codes to enter almost all buildings throughout the country and the allowance of home quarantine for infected people, practically making centralized quarantine facilities a thing of the past.

[Cover image screengrab via That's/Alistair Baker-Brian]