China Tourism officials feel the world is ganging up against Chinese tourists and make travel a nightmare for many. Chinese official are talking about unfriendly nations over-reacting.
In South Korea, signs have begun popping up on restaurant windows saying, “no Chinese allowed.” A casino in the country catering to foreign visitors said it’s no longer accepting groups of tourists from China. More than half a million people signed a petition, submitted to the government, calling for a ban on visitors from the nearby country of 1.4 billion.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Tuesday said extremely restrictive measures by some countries to curb the novel coronavirus outbreak cause discrimination and panic, which are “more dangerous than the novel coronavirus itself”, according to Xinhua.
Some hotels in (northwest Cambodia’s) Siem Reap Province have not only welcomed Chinese tourists but given them a discount. The Cambodian people are not discriminating against Chinese tourists and investors.
Nearly as many Chinese visited for business purposes as pleasure last year, according to the report, or 936,000 and 1.08 million.
Chinese visitors were wearing light blue surgical masks as they toured the ruins at Angkor Wat, which is usually packed with Chinese tourists during the Lunar New Year holiday but was notably quiet this past week.
On Tuesday, over 300 Lao companies donated more than $500,000 at an event in Laos to support China’s fight against the novel coronavirus epidemic and at the same time are welcoming Chinese visitors.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has said that the Malaysian government would provide assistance, when needed, in the form of food and medical essentials to Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic, and other areas in China.
In Denmark, the Chinese Embassy called on the country’s Jyllands-Posten newspaper to apologize for an editorial cartoon that depicts China’s flag with virus symbols instead of stars on a red background.
Those of Chinese descent, but not from China, have also been met with harsh reactions. In Sri Lanka, a group of tourists from Singapore — where the majority of people are of Chinese descent — were barred from climbing local attraction Ella Rock because of their appearance, according to Tucker Chang, 66, one of the tourists. No one in the group had a history of recent travel to China.
In France, the ministry of foreign affairs advised schools and universities to postpone student exchanges with China. At least one high school in Paris withdrew invitations to a group of students set to arrive this week.
In Canada, parents in communities north of Toronto started a petition urging schools to force students who recently returned from China to stay home for at least 17 days to avoid any chance of spreading the disease. The petition has garnered almost 10,000 signatures in the area, which has large ethnic-Chinese and Asian populations.
