"Starting from August 30, people will no longer be required to do tests for nucleic acid or antigen before entering China," Wang Wenbin said at a briefing.

China began opening borders to travelers in January of this year, after three years of restrictions that have been in place since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then the Chinese authorities canceled the mandatory quarantine for arrivals, but left in force the provision of a negative test for coronavirus, reports Interfax.ru.

At the same time, Beijing began issuing ordinary visas and temporary residence permits for foreigners, and residents of mainland China began to receive foreign passports and tourist visas again.

In March, China resumed issuing tourist visas to foreign citizens.

Since 2020, China has adhered to a "zero tolerance" policy for COVID-19, which meant the use of measures such as lockdowns and mandatory quarantine for those who came into contact with infected people. At the same time, the Chinese economy showed the lowest growth rates in almost fifty years. In December 2022, the Chinese authorities began to ease the restrictions adopted to curb the spread of the virus, which caused a jump in diseases and deaths.

According to the Worldometers portal, which specializes in statistics on the most important world events, during the pandemic in China, about 503 thousand cases of coronavirus were diagnosed and 5.2 thousand deaths were registered due to COVID-19 infection.