21 12月 2022 Covid-19: Covid-19 Curbs Further Eased in China
1. Covid-19: Covid-19 Curbs Further Eased in China
On December 7, 2022, 10 new measures were released to ease the Covid-19 curbs and there were several subsequent announcements to further implement the measures, which we summarize below:
(1) High risk areas shall only be limited to a certain household and all forms of temporary closure and control are not allowed.[1]
(2) Except for special places such as nursing homes, welfare homes, medical institutions, childcare institutions, primary and secondary schools, no nucleic acid test and health code will be checked. For people travelling across different cities, nucleic acid test/quarantine upon arrival will no longer be carried out.[2]
Special rules for Beijing: People shall still provide health code and negative nucleic acid test within 48 hours if they go to enclosed places such as restaurants (dine-in), gyms, bars, KTV, sauna and bathing, etc.
(3) Quarantine for those infected without severe symptoms: 7-day home quarantine and they can be free if nucleic acid tests taken on the 6th and 7th day are negative; Quarantine for close contacts of those infected: 5-day home quarantine. Besides, people can also choose to go to centralized quarantine places voluntarily.[3]
(4) E-travel history system is abolished.[4]
Currently, the rules for overseas travelers have not been changed, and thus travelers shall still take one nucleic acid test with 48 hours before departure, and take a 5-day centralized quarantine[5] + 3-day home quarantine[6] after arrival.
http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2022-12/07/content_5730475.htm
http://wjw.beijing.gov.cn/wjwh/ztzl/xxgzbd/gzbdzcfg/202212/t20221207_2872702.html
http://finance.people.com.cn/n1/2022/1212/c1004-32585466.htm
[1] Previously high risk areas shall be limited to a certain building unit.
[2] Previously negative nucleic acid test within 24/48/72 hours and health code shall be checked; for people travelling across different cities, usually nucleic acid test and quarantine upon arrival shall be carried out.
[3] Special rules for Beijing: for those infected, no need to take nucleic acid tests on the 6th and 7th day. Previously for those infected: centralized quarantine; for close contacts of those infected: 5-day centralized quarantine + 3-day home quarantine.
[4] E-travel history system was lauched from February 13, 2020 by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Its main fonction was to track peoples’ cross-city travels over the preceding 14 days, which enabled government to know if an individual had been to any high risk cities.
[5] You do not need to book any living place in advance. If the destination is Beijing, the centralized quarantine is not in hotel but a special community at remote areas of Beijing.
[6] For the 3-day home quarantine, you need to obtain approval from the community first. Normally for foreign travelers, they will conduct a 8-day hotel quarantine.
2. E-commerce law: Provisions on Comment Threading Services on the Internet Released
The Cyberspace Administration of China issued the Administrative Provisions on Comment Threading Services on the Internet (“Provisions”), effective from December 15, 2022. Recently, many netizens have been using crude language/rumors to attack others on different online platforms by way of comments, etc. The Provisions were released to control the netizens’ misconducts, to impose obligations on service providers,[1] and the main features are as follows:
(1) Major obligations of the service providers
a. Verify the real identity information of the netizens before making comments
- For an individual: mobile number or ID card number shall be registered;
- For an enterprise: unified social credit code shall be registered.
b. Establish the system for the protection of the personal information of users
Establish the system of “censorship before release” concerning news information; timely identify and dispose of illegal and negative information, and report to the cyberspace administrations etc.[2]
(2) Sanctions for netizens’ misconducts[3]
For netizens posting illegal and improper comments, the service providers are entitled to take the following measures against the netizens:
- warning
- refusal to publish their comments
- deleting their comments
- restriction of their account functions
- suspension of their account updating
- closure of their accounts
- prohibition of re-registering the account
http://www.cac.gov.cn/2022-11/16/c_1670253725725039.htm
Should you need to know more details, please reach us at asialians@asiallians.com.
[1] The service providers provide services of threading text, symbols, expressions, pictures, audio and video and other information provided for the users by the internet websites, applications and other qualified online platforms, by way of comments, replies, messages, bullet screens, likes, etc.
[2] Article 4 of the Provisions.
[3] Article 7 of the Provisions