China offers flights to evacuate citizens from coronavirus-hit India, as border tensions rise

China is making plans to evacuate its citizens from India, with chartered flights taking place from early next month as the country grapples with a rise in Covid-19 infections from migrant labourers returning to their hometowns.

The Chinese embassy in New Delhi posted a statement on its website and WeChat messaging account on Monday, telling citizens to sign up for the flights by Wednesday, May 27.

The notice, in Mandarin, said students, tourists and temporary business visitors “who have difficulties and are in urgent need of returning home” should take the charter flights. Passengers would need to bear the cost of travel and undergo a mandatory two-week quarantine after landing in the mainland.

The evacuation exercise takes place against the backdrop of rising military tensions between the two Asian giants along their disputed border. A flurry of media reports have pointed to clashes between troops and military build-ups at several points along the Line of Actual Control that divides China and India, fuelling speculation about each side’s motives. Officials have remained measured in their responses to journalists’ questions on the issue.

The embassy notice led to further talk that the evacuations were linked to the border dispute, but China has been carrying out such plans for its citizens worldwide since getting the coronavirus outbreak under control at home.

India, meanwhile, has around 145,000 confirmed Covid-19 infections and is into its eighth week of a strict lockdown, though restrictions in several places have been eased to boost the flagging economy. While domestic flights have restarted, international flights remain suspended.

More than 3,000 Chinese nationals are thought to still be in the country, including at least 240 students as well as tourists and business owners who are not yet able to restart their operations.

Last month, China’s ambassador to India, Sun Weidong, said Chinese citizens in the country were safe and were not infected by the virus. The embassy has been fielding queries from them on its telephone hotline and WeChat account, with many asking how they can return to the mainland.

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Chinese citizens in India said there would normally be more of them in the country at any given time, but many had returned home for the Lunar New Year celebrations at the end of January and had remained there as their Indian visas were suspended when China was in the throes of the pandemic in February.

India evacuated 600 of its own citizens from Wuhan in February.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the Chinese embassy website showed that 1,887 people had signed up for the repatriation exercise.

There are five flights between June 2 and 8, leaving from New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata, to five Chinese cities including Shanghai and Guangzhou. The capital, Beijing, is not on the list while China’s annual legislative session continues.

The Chinese embassy did not respond to questions about the capacity of the five planned flights. In early May, China arranged a flight from Dubai for 273 citizens and two flights from Nepal carrying 346 citizens back to China.

India has seen increased tourist arrivals from China in recent years, while Chinese investment in the country, especially in the tech and infrastructure sectors, has also resulted in more Chinese visitors.

Devin Xia is one of the Chinese citizens who has registered for the special flights. He opened an e-sports gaming centre in Bangalore last October which attracts mostly Chinese expat workers living in the city, as well as local gamers. But the pandemic has dealt a blow to his business: customer volume dropped by half in February and he had to shut his doors when the lockdown was implemented in March.

The rent for his premises alone costs him 720,000 rupees (US$9,500) a month and comes on top of his upfront investment of 40 million rupees (US$529,000).

Seeing no hope of his business recovering in the next six months, Xia decided to shut the store permanently and started to sell assets such as computers and furniture to reduce his loss.

Before the notice about the evacuation, he had already booked a ticket to fly back to China on June 19, but realised the special flight might be his only chance to return as commercial international flights are yet to resume operations in India.

“I did not wish to return to China so early, even as I have my closure of business half done. But I had no choice,” Xia said. “With rising cases in India, I suspect India will not return to normalcy for a long time to come. Hence I plan to leave the country now.”

No money, no food, far from home. In India, millions just like them

While the more than 145,000 infections and over 4,100 deaths in India – the world’s second-most populous country, with 1.4 billion people – are not as high as in some European countries, there are fears that as millions of migrant workers return from large cities to its villages, the pandemic could spread in areas where medical care is limited.

Officials from the Indian home and railway ministries said at least 4.5 million workers had migrated home from economic hubs in the two months since Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared a lockdown.

Additional reporting by DPA