Beijing suddenly canceled most of the international flights into China beginning on March 29, causing many overseas Chinese to get stranded on their return trip.
Some were stuck in the airport where they had layover flights, unable to catch a plane to their home country.
Chinese authorities, on the other hand, did not offer such assistance.
Chinese social media were filled with messages from stranded Chinese citizens, including those who went abroad for business trips, tourists whose travel plans were disrupted due to the pandemic, and youth studying abroad who wished to return to China.
Stuck Overseas
“Chinese Embassy, we want to go home!” about 30 Chinese shouted slogans outside the Chinese embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, on March 30.“Some of them are tourists,” according to the report. “Some of them have spent all their money.”
“Some students have been stuck here for three days,” QQ Naicha said. “Flights were canceled again and again… We are on the verge of a psychological breakdown… Our parents in China are [going] crazy [due to concerns about their whereabouts].”
QQ Naicha goes to school in the Kansas City area in the United States. Another student surnamed Hu who is studying at Pennsylvania State University said she had a similar experience.
New Rule
On March 26, China’s Civil Aviation Administration announced a new rule to limit flights into China, explaining that it wished to prevent imported cases of CCP virus infections.For foreign airlines, each company can only have one flight into China every week. For Chinese airlines, each company can have one flight from each country where they operate flights into China per week.
For all flights to China, airlines can only sell 75 percent of tickets, to ensure social distancing.
The United States, Australia, Singapore, Philippines, Italy, Spain, and dozens of other countries banned all commercial passenger flights to China since February, after the CCP virus outbreak became severe in China. Some Chinese nationals who wished to return to China thus encountered difficulties.
Ma said 1,457 of them have returned to China, including the students from Ethiopia.
The Epoch Times refers to the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19, as the CCP virus because the Chinese Communist Party’s coverup and mismanagement allowed the virus to spread throughout China and create a global pandemic.