Beijing irked over India's advisory for citizens against travel to China

Beijing has conveyed to New Delhi its displeasure over the advisory India issued earlier this week asking its citizens to refrain from travelling to China in view of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the communist country.

Talking to External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar over phone, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi noted that the World Health Organization had not recommended restrictions on trading with or travelling to China. “At yesterday's briefing on the novel coronavirus outbreak, the WHO does not recommend travel or trade restrictions against China. We believe that India and other countries will respect this important recommendation,” Sun Weidong, Beijing's envoy to New Delhi, posted on Twitter on Saturday, quoting Wang telling Jaishankar.

With the death toll and number of people infected by the 2019-nCoV growing, New Delhi on Wednesday upgraded its travel advisory on China, asking its citizens to refrain from travelling to the communist country. The United States and several other countries issued similar travel advisories asking their citizens not to travel to China - much to the chagrin of the Chinese Government.

The US and Australia also barred entry of foreign nationals who had recently visited China.

Jaishankar called up Wang on Friday – around the same time in the evening when a Boeing 747 of Air India landed at the airport in Wuhan in central China – to airlift 324 Indian stranded at the Ground Zero of the latest novel coronavirus outbreak. He thanked Chinese Foreign Minister, as a reluctant Beijing finally agreed to let Government of India bring back its citizens. The aircraft returned to Delhi with the evacuees early on Saturday.

India is also set to airlift the remaining citizens from other areas of Hubei in China soon.

The WHO briefing Wang and Sun referred to was the one the apex global health organization had on Thursday.

“Wang Yi said that to address transnational public health challenges in this era of globalization, we need to stay objective and rational, and step up communication and coordination,” Sun stated in a series of posts on Twitter on Saturday. He quoted Wang telling Jaishankar that all should play a constructive role. “We don't think it is helpful for certain country to hype up the situation, or even create panic, Wang Yi stressed”.

New Delhi had on Monday formally requested Beijing to allow it to send special aircraft to evacuate over 700 Indian citizens from Hubei province of China.

Beijing, however, had sat on New Delhi's request for two days.

China had been trying to dissuade not only India, but also the US, France and other foreign nations from airlifting their citizens from China. It had been worried because such large-scale evacuation of foreign nationals from its territory might portray it in poor light and undermine the credibility of its claim that it was capable of containing the outbreak.

“The WHO (World Health Organization) does not recommend evacuation of nationals and called on the international community to remain calm and not overreact,” Sun, China's envoy to India, had tweeted earlier on January 28, quoting Dr Tedros Adhanom, Director General of the apex global health body, saying in Beijing.

New Delhi, however, kept insisting and finally Beijing had on Thursday late at night agreed to help India evacuate its citizens from China.

The evacuees have been quarantined soon after their arrival in New Delhi early on Saturday. They will be kept under observation 14 days.