Fight against virus should not slacken, it's not gone away

In traditional Chinese culture, the rabbit is regarded as the luckiest of the Chinese zodiac signs. It represents peace, longevity, prosperity, which all reasonable and sensible people look forward to.

Chinese folklore considers the rabbit, the fourth in the 12-year cycle of Chinese zodiac signs, a particularly gentle, kind, tender and particularly alert creature. All this appears to predict 2023 to be a year of hope.

I spent a part of the Spring Festival holiday in Bangkok, my first overseas trip in over three years. The trip was made possible because of the Chinese central government's decision late last year to ease its "dynamic clearing" COVID-19 prevention and control policy, doing away with the mandatory quarantine and other restrictions. The governments of the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions (SARs) quickly followed suit. The result is an extraordinarily speedy recovery of the tourism industry in China.