Russia has restricted visas for ordinary Chinese, but visitors with official, business, humanitarian and transit visas will still be allowed into the country, the Russian Foreign Ministry said recently.  However, it could be that this virus is spreading precisely at business meetings  so who can explain?

The Russian ban on Chinese visas  was announced ahead of time last Tuesday and went into effect on Thursday at midnight Moscow time (2100 GMT), giving the Chinese about three days to scoot on in before the gates closed.

Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/article240423111.html#storylink=cpy

Whether the Corona Virus is fake or not, I cannot say, but shipping statistics are real.

Seafarer Times reports that, in addition to a drop in shipping out of Chinese ports,

“Companies exporting goods into China are also facing problems because only a fraction of workers are back at work to handle goods arriving at ports. That has backed up cargo at terminals and warehouses at big gateways including Shanghai, Tianjin and Ningbo.”

Wuhan uses Port Ningbo on the East China Sea, except for shipments to Japan, which bypass Ningbo and go directly to Osaka, and other Japanese ports, according to these reports.

Wuhan has an inland river port called the Port of Wuhan, run by the Wuhan Group. It’s the largest port in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze river and was one of China’s best performing river hubs.

In 2019 it carried one million TEU for the first time after adding  “new developing routes” and “introducing new shipping companies” which allowed for direct shipping to Japan on custom made container ships.

This newly introduced direct shipping between Wuhan, China and Osaka, Japan was announced with pride in November of 2019.

On the 28th of January 2020 DP World, which operates three port terminals in mainland China, was reported to have suspended all staff travel to the China until further notice. Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayman is the Chairman of the board DP World, which recently agreed  to acquire a majority stake in TIS container terminal in the Port of Yuzhny, Ukraine.

“The Ukrainian container market grew over 20% in 2019, and TIS Container Terminal has one of the most efficient railway connections in the region to major Ukrainian cities, supporting trade flows to the hinterland.”, according to the DP World website.

Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, Group Chairman and CEO of DP World, said: “We are delighted to extend our Ukraine footprint with this venture and are excited about the significant growth potential of the terminal. Our goal is to build the industry’s leading data-driven supply chain solutions through our global portfolio, creating opportunities for our…”.

However, A.P. Moeller-Maersk, the largest container shipping line in the world, issued an advisory on 29 January 2020 that all operations on mainland China would be unchanged.

On 24 January 2020, the Maritime Port Authority Singapore (MPA), the body in charge of the Port of Singapore, China’s biggest trade partner, had already begun screening all seafaring visitors.

The first economic fallout from the Corona Virus occurred when the Chinese economy lost a good part of the usual $145 billion normally exchanged during the Lunar New Year.

The shipping ports get hit with the next wave. The first indication is that there aren’t enough people at work to deal with refrigerated cargo at the ports, even as the number of containers shipped has plummeted.

https://seafarertimes.com/2018-19/node/3742

One Shanghai broker said at least one [at least one?] container ship that can move more than 20,000 containers left Shanghai for Northern Europe with only 2,000 full containers.

“It will pick up more at ports on its way, but loading data show it will reach Europe around 35% full,” this broker said. “That’s unprecedented, and a lot of money is being lost because it doesn’t even cover the fuel cost.”

By mid February, more than 350,000 containers had been removed from global trade since the “outbreak of the virus led China to impose large travel restrictions at the end of the country’s Lunar New Year holiday break.”

“Substantially less cargo is being moved between China and the rest of the world” said Lars Jensen, head of Denmark-based maritime research group Sea-Intelligence. “Last week we had an additional 30 sailings canceled, with 23 across the Pacific and the rest to Europe.”

Reporting in November of 2019: How quickly the tables turn.

Xinhua Silk Road website reported on November of 2019  from their Belt and Road Portal, China’s silk road economic belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Website:
“Central China’s Wuhan kicks off direct container shipping service to Japan
November 28, 2019
Abstract : Central China Logistics Hanya 1, the tailored 500-TEU vessel for the Wuhan-Japan direct container shipping route, departed the Yangluo port in Wuhan, capital of Central China’s Hubei Province, and headed for Japan early on Thursday.

WUHAN, Nov. 28 (Xinhua) –

In five days, the container  ships sail eastward alongside the Yangtze River and arrive at the port of Osaka in Japan, marking the formal operation of the direct river-ocean container shipping route linking Wuhan and Japan.

“As an official from Wuhan Port and Shipping Development Group introduces, the Wuhan-Japan shipping route adopts a “point to point” shipping mode, under which the related container vessels set off from the Yangluo port of Wuhan and stop in Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya and other ports in Japan.

Previously, container ships from Wuhan to Japan need transshipment in east China’s Shanghai and are often troubled by uncertainties in marine traffic and weather conditions, which directly increase the logistics cycle and costs of related enterprises.

Zhang Lin, director of Wuhan New Port Administration Committee, said that compared with the past transshipment-needed river-ocean joint transportation, the new direct container shipping service saves much more than a shipping distance of around 1,000 km and about two days of shipping time. It differs from the past shipping route in management concepts, vessel utilization, cargo source organization and shipping services, noted Zhang.

Operation of the route means Wuhan can directly carry out logistics trade with Japan and the new route is likely to be a key bridge to boost economic and trade cooperation between China and Japan, remarked Zhang.”

https://en.imsilkroad.com/p/309674.html

Chinese Tourism in the Middle East and Europe

According to the annual report released by Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of Chinese tourists that visited Israel in 2019 reached 156,100, up 36.7 percent compared to 2018.

“Thanks to the closer ties between China and Israel, a number of non-stop flights have been in operation, serving as a significant bridge for tourism and people-to-people exchanges between the two nations” reported from JERUSALEM, Feb. 18 published (Xinhua) — “The unexpected novel coronavirus epidemic has created some temporary impacts, but China’s tourism market has a huge potential for Israel over the long term”, said Israeli Tourism Minister Yariv Levin.

The statistics for 2019 European travel haven’t been published yet.

With 14 million Chinese tourists in Europe in 2018, then in 2019, the numbers could have only gone up, according to trends worldwide.

In 2000, a modest 10.5 million overseas trips were made by Chinese residents.  In 2018 the number had risen to 149.7 million overseas trips for an increase of 1,326 per cent.

See the graphs here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/comment/rise-of-the-chinese-tourist/

“According to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO) Chinese tourists overseas spent $277.3bn in 2018, up from around $10bn in the year 2000. Collectively, America’s globetrotters parted with a relatively paltry $144.2bn.”

The travel and tourism industry is one of the world’s largest industries with a global economic contribution (direct, indirect and induced) of over 7.6 trillion U.S. dollars in 2016.

Reports are that Europe’s main travel destinations are empty of tourists.

Modes of Transportation: Planes, Trains and Cruise Ships

SARS and influenza were transmitted easily on aircraft, and the reason is due to the dry air and extremely close quarters.  These “…,of course, are only two of the multitude of bugs lurking out there. But the case of Flight 112 suggests that the current understanding of the spread of airborne disease aboard aircraft, which is based on tuberculosis investigations, may be outdated. Emergency medicine specialist Mark A. Gendreau, MD, senior staff physician at Lahey Clinic Medical Center, Burlington, Mass., recently reviewed what is and isn’t known about infectious disease spread during air travel.

The full article is here:

https://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/features/disease-prevention-traveling

Quotes:
“Federal regulatory agencies need to tighten the rules in terms of ventilation and in terms of the HEPA filters that are used,” Gendreau says. “Now, in the U.S. and Europe, there are no requirements for how much ventilation an aircraft should have. They don’t specify what kind of HEPA filters to use – or even require them.”

“…Since cruising altitudes are higher than this, planes cycle air through their engines to pressurize it. That heats the air, which is then cooled. This wrings out just about every drop of moisture.

“We end up with low-humidity, desert-like air,” DeHart says. “The longer you fly, the drier your mucous membranes get. And the dryer they get, the more susceptible they are to infection. So in a cabin with nearly 500 people, the air is circulated, the air is filtered — but still, infectious material gets spread.”

The travel industry is promoting domestic travel now, but since all borders have been open for so long, there’s actually no longer greater safety in domestic anything.

Flights from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur continue, according to flightaware.com and online ticket portals.  Kuala Lumpur then enables a flight eitback to Seoul, South Korea (and on to Canada, etc.) or a variety of flights toward the Arab desert cities and also European cities.  Air traffic is very heavy between Southeast Asia and Canada recently.