Beijing:
China has stated it “cannot relax pandemic controls” to facilitate foreign travel, signalling that there are no instant plans to permit more than 4 lakh foreign students, such as more than 23,000 Indians, largely studying medicine in Chinese universities.
Li Bin, vice-minister of the National Health Commission, stated authorities would continue to focus on stopping imported infections from spreading locally and strengthen inspection of imported goods.
“Some cities have recently seen local clusters caused by imported cases of the Delta variant, including in Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Ruili,” he told reporters in Beijing on Thursday.
“These waves have reminded us that we cannot relax our pandemic control measures,” Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted him as saying.
Ruili, a city on the Myanmar border, went into lockdown on Wednesday as authorities attempt to preserve a lid on China’s newest COVID-19 outbreak, which has been linked to the Delta strain.
Li’s comments came as the Chinese Foreign Ministry on Friday parried inquiries on developing calls to permit the return of more than 4 lakh foreign students from distinctive components of the world to resume their research as they are stuck in their nations considering that last year.
Calls for China to permit the return of the students grew louder not only from India but distinctive nations as the frustrated students earlier this month wrote to Chinese President Xi Jinping, looking for his intervention to permit their return to their universities.
China International Student Union – an organisation campaigning for the return of foreign students to China – wrote an open letter to Xi, stating that foreign students have been in “grave desperation”.
The union drew upon comments Xi made in 2010, when he referred to foreign students as “forever, a friend of China”, the Post reported earlier.
“Today these forever friends of China are in a precarious situation that only China can remedy. Our education is on the line, our future is at stake,” the letter reads.
China for its portion has been sustaining that the on line classes have been becoming carried out to the students by the universities, although parrying inquiries about permitting their return, citing the spread of pandemic in distinctive nations.
But the on line classes had tiny effect on more than 23,000 Indian health-related students as they necessary to back up their research with laboratory facilities.
Frustrations for the foreign students grew as hundreds of Chinese students studying in the US universities started rushing back immediately after Washington opened the visa approach to facilitate their return.
On Friday, an Arab journalist asked the Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin when will China let the international students to return as numerous students from Arab nations want to resume their research.
He reiterated that the Chinese government has attached excellent value to the concern of foreign students coming to China, and will make general considerations for the return of foreign students to China beneath the premise of making sure the security of epidemic prevention.
When pressed additional on the developing aggravation of foreign students, such as these from India, Wang stated: “On the basis of ensuring safety amid COVID-19, we will consider in a coordinated manner an arrangement for allowing foreign students to return to China for their studies.”
“At the same time, I stress again that in light of the evolving epidemic situation, China will decide on prevention and control measures in a coordinated way based on scientific analysis.
“We stand prepared to work actively towards the wholesome, secure and orderly cross-border flow of folks on the basis of sound epidemic measures,” he said.
Indian diplomats in Beijing said that they have taken up with the Chinese government both at the level of foreign ministry and the education ministry about the plight of Indian students stuck at home and their pleas to return with an undertaking to follow all the specified protocols.
“As noted in its preceding communications, the Embassy of India in Beijing has continued to comply with up closely with Chinese authorities, such as the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, with regards to the issues of Indian students in China, specially their early return to colleges/universities in this nation,” the Indian Embassy said in a statement on March 22.
It is not only the Indian students but those from countries like Pakistan, which have close ties with China, have not been permitted to return.
Pakistani students, who make up the third largest group of foreign students in China, are also suffering, a recent report in the Post said.
It quoted Waseem Iqbal, a third-year PhD student from Pakistan studying at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, who left China in December 2019 and has since been unable to find a job or withdraw money because all his documents are still at his university.
“I want to take care of (my parents), invest in medicine. I be concerned that, God forbid, if a thing occurs, I have absolutely nothing,” the Post quoted him as saying.
Over 4.40 lakh foreign students from a variety of components of the world studied in China. This integrated more than 23,000 Indian students, largely studying medicine in a variety of Chinese health-related colleges immediately after paying heavy charges.
Officials say China has to permit the return of the foreign students either by September this year or by April next year at the start out of the new academic year.
Also, China is exceptionally cautious as it made preparations for the winter Olympics to be held in February next year.
China, which has broadly controlled the coronavirus immediately after it very first reported in Wuhan in 2019, is at present vaccinating its folks at a hectic pace. As of now, it has administered about 1.34 billion doses of vaccines.
Officials anticipate China, which has more than 1.4 billion folks, to vaccinate about 70 per cent of its folks by early next year to accomplish herd immunity. Until then, China may perhaps continue to stonewall foreign travel.