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Speaker 1: China says it will hit back at nations with COVID

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Speaker 1: restrictions on its travelers. UM. Let us dig a little

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Speaker 1: bit deeper here, joining us live as Bloomberg's Beijing bureau

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Speaker 1: editor Philip Glaman. Thank you, Philip for making time with us.

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Speaker 1: I appreciated. What I'm seeing is that Beijang is saying

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Speaker 1: that the restrictions, uh, of which are coming from a

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Speaker 1: lot of places now, are not based on science. Is

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Speaker 1: that it yeah, good morning from Beijing. UM. That's about

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Speaker 1: the size of it. UM. The virus has been a

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Speaker 1: political issue in China from the very beginning UM, and

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Speaker 1: of course Jan being made um stamping out COVID nineteen

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Speaker 1: priority and a signature policy of his over the past

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Speaker 1: few years. So so these countries putting up um, you know,

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Speaker 1: restrictions as China sees them, is is is really irking

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Speaker 1: the Chinese government. They've stepped up their their propaganda and

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Speaker 1: they're complaining over the past few days UM about this

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Speaker 1: and so far that's that's kind of uh, you know

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Speaker 1: where we're at. They haven't really laid out any sort

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Speaker 1: of specific um uh countermeasures that they're going to take,

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Speaker 1: or any sort of or even named any of the

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Speaker 1: countries that they're especially annoyed with. I was gonna I

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Speaker 1: was gonna ask that what form of retribution could it take?

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Speaker 1: I mean, what what what could they do at this point?

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Speaker 1: Travelers in they don't want that. I mean, they could

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Speaker 1: reach the potential in Beijing of digging a deeper hole,

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Speaker 1: couldn't they. Yeah, this is one of those disputes that

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Speaker 1: right now you might think could escalate. Um, it probably won't. Um.

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Speaker 1: China's is very clever about these things. That has a

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Speaker 1: way of of ramping up the rhetoric and then um,

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Speaker 1: in a few days time or in a you know,

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Speaker 1: some sometime down the road, this this could all just

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Speaker 1: sort of go away. Um. It could you know, require

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Speaker 1: tests to enter China and some countries, um, things like that.

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Speaker 1: But it doesn't really seem like something that would get

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Speaker 1: that China let get too far out of control. Yeah. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: the US says there's there's no need for it, says

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Speaker 1: protecting its citizens and that it is a smart science. Um. Meanwhile,

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Speaker 1: we're running a story on Bloomberg today that the current

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Speaker 1: COVID surgeon Shanghai is is again putting major stresses on crematoriums.

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Speaker 1: What do we know. Yeah, so crematoriums and emergency rooms, UM,

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Speaker 1: the ones that we visited in the videos that we

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Speaker 1: see on social media, they've been pretty busy. UM. And

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Speaker 1: so what it looks like um, and we have to

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Speaker 1: guess because the Chinese government doesn't put out data anymore

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Speaker 1: on the number of people who are sick or dying

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Speaker 1: of COVID and so it does look like UM as

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Speaker 1: you might expect with with Oh Macron, that elderly people

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Speaker 1: and people with underlying health conditions are passing away. UM.

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Speaker 1: And so we've seen crematoriums get busy. We've seen people

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Speaker 1: have We've we've talked to people who have said that

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Speaker 1: they have had, you know, difficulty getting a loved one

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Speaker 1: who passed away from their house to the crematorium because

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Speaker 1: the crematoriums are busy. So one person said that a

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Speaker 1: body had to wait in their home for five days. UM.

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Speaker 1: So it's a little bit of a struggle that UM

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Speaker 1: China is dealing with right now. It's it's tricky to

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Speaker 1: get the full picture of it because UM, the government

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Speaker 1: is in you know, they when when we visit crematoriums

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Speaker 1: or we ask for this data, you know, they don't.

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Speaker 1: They don't provide the data, and they're telling us to

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Speaker 1: leave the crematoriums or funeral homes or what have you.

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Speaker 1: So it's really tough to get a clear picture, but

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Speaker 1: so far that's what we're seeing. Alright, A lot of

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Speaker 1: legs on on this. Going forward to Philip, thank you

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Speaker 1: so much for your time. We really appreciated. Beijing bureau

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Speaker 1: editor for Bloomberg, Philip Glaman