China tightens security along border with Vietnam amid Covid-19 outbreak

Name: China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak
Uploaded: 2021-05-31T11:00:18.000Z
Duration: 2 min 2 s
Description: China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak

Frontier is closed to foreign visitors unless they have permits and authorities are clamping down to stop people from illegally entering the country

Checkpoints have been set up in recent months and villagers are helping officials to patrol remote, mountainous areas

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A Chinese truck driver gets a temperature check at the Huu Nghi border post in Lang Son, Vietnam. There are restrictions on foreign visitors on both sides of the border. Photo: Reuters

Laura Zhou

Published: 7:00pm, 31 May 2021Updated: 10:03pm, 31 May 2021

China has tightened security along the southwest border with Vietnam as its neighbour grapples with its worst outbreak of Covid-19 and a new variant that appears to spread quickly.

The 1,297km (806 mile) border has been closed to foreign visitors on both sides since the pandemic began, but China began allowing in those with permits in September, while officials, foreign investors and skilled workers are exempted and can enter Vietnam.

Now, as Vietnam tries to contain a rising number of infections, Chinese authorities are clamping down, concerned about foreigners trying to enter the country illegally through remote and mountainous areas in Yunnan province and the Guangxi Zhuang region.

Checkpoints have been set up in recent months along the Chinese border in Yunnan and Guangxi, with villagers even deployed for patrols to assist officials looking for people trying to cross into China.

Guangxi took action this month, with 41 checkpoints set up in Ningming alone – a county that shares a 212km border with the Vietnamese provinces of Long Son and Quang Ninh.

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China’s southern Guangdong province in high gear to quash Covid-19 outbreak

The Ningming government said 300 officials had been sent to 164 villages for “random inspections” to make sure the border restrictions were being adhered to. Some 1,573 people – 1,434 of them Vietnamese – had been detained in the county in the past year for attempting to enter China illegally.