Chinese state media said Covid-19 testing requirements imposed around the world in response to a surging wave of infections were “discriminatory”, in the clearest pushback yet against restrictions that are slowing down its reopening.

Having kept its borders all but shut for three years, imposing a strict regime of lockdowns and relentless testing, China abruptly reversed course towards living with the virus on December 7, and a wave of infections erupted across the country.

Some places have been taken aback by the scale of China’s outbreak and expressed scepticism over Beijing’s Covid statistics, with the US, South Korea, India, Italy, Spain, Japan and Taiwan imposing Covid tests for travellers from China. Malaysia said it would screen all international arrivals for fever.

“The real intention is to sabotage China’s three years of Covid-19 control efforts and attack the country’s system,” state-run tabloid Global Times said in an article late on Thursday, calling the restrictions “unfounded” and ”discriminatory”.

China will stop requiring inbound travellers to go into quarantine from January 8. But it will still demand a negative PCR test result within 48 hours before departure. Italy on Thursday urged the rest of the European Union to follow its lead, but France, Germany and Portugal have said they saw no need for new restrictions, while Austria has stressed the economic benefits of Chinese tourists’ return to Europe.

Global spending by Chinese visitors was worth more than $250 billion a year before the pandemic. The US has raised concerns about potential mutations of the virus as it sweeps through the world’s most populous country, as well as over China’s data transparency.

The US Center for Disease Control and Prevention is considering sampling wastewater from international aircraft to track any emerging new variants, the agency told Reuters.

China, a country of 1.4 billion people, reported one new Covid death for Thursday, same as the day before — numbers which do not match the experience of other countries after they reopened.

China’s official death toll of 5,247 since the pandemic began compares with more than 1 million deaths in the US. Chinese-ruled Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million, has reported more than 11,000 deaths.

UK-based health data firm Airfinity said on Thursday that around 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from Covid.