Coronavirus: China-Myanmar border towns eye revival after Covid
- Lack of travel has haunted trade-dependent cities such as Ruili since April 2020, when the flow of goods and people from Myanmar was cut off
- As many businesses closed down, the city of a quarter of a million people saw its population decline by 40,000 between 2020 and 2021
At a checkpoint on China’s southern frontier with Myanmar, shuttered stores advertising the region’s famed jade jewellery appear abandoned, driven out of business by a pandemic-induced closure of the border.
The city of Ruili is slowly creaking back to life as China ditches its zero-tolerance Covid strategy after years of strict lockdowns and other gruelling restrictions.
An absence of cross-border travel has haunted the trade-dependent city since April 2020, when the flow of goods and people from Myanmar was cut off.
On Sunday a Myanmar official said the border had finally been partially reopened, with some trucks making the crossing – spurring hope for a revival of the local economy. Ruili was one of China’s hardest hit cities during the three-year campaign to keep the virus at bay.
It became a key battleground in the fight to keep imported Covid-19 cases out of China, with residents living through nearly a dozen lockdowns and prevented from travelling for most of the period.
“We were locked down so many times each year, not just once or twice – as if we were sleeping for months and months at home,” Duan, a jade seller in the city’s DeLong jewellery market, said.