Southeast Asia yearning for return of Chinese tourists

This summer, Southeast Asia is opening up to tourists for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic began. But one group will be conspicuously absent: Chinese tourists. Over the past decade, rising fortunes in China resulted in a surge of Chinese holiday makers across Southeast Asia — until they came to underpin the region’s entire travel sector. But President Xi Jinping’s hardline COVID-19 shutdown has frozen them in place. A whole range of businesses in Southeast Asia, from restaurants to hotels, are desperate for Beijing to untether its population. Patrick Winn has the story.

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