certain flights, it s based around what s considered to be a circuit breaker rule. that was put in by chinese aviation regulators, essentially saying, paula, that if you have five or more positive cases on one flight, it will be suspended for two weeks. and then if you have more than that number of cases, it could be suspended for several weeks. so what we re likely to enter next week is the reality that there are no china-bound flights from the u.s. now, when you mentioned the olympic athletes and some of the personnel and media, sure, that could impact some individuals who would normally be taking commercial flights. many of them have already orchestrated chartered flights so as to get around that, knowing there have been limited international flights into china over the past several months and really even dating back two years to the start of this pandemic. but it complicates matters even more. the olympics is supposed to be that opportunity to showcase to the world, from china s pe
from beijing. david, ibd understand a number flights from the u.s. now being canceled because of this cluster. reporter: and this is going to be, laura, an unprecedented scenario. it is likely to take place next week that any china-bound flight from the u.s. will not go forward. and the reason is it s something called a circuit breaker rule that the chinese aviation regulators have put in place. essentially, if you have more than five cases, that flight will be suspended for two weeks. if you have anything above that number, well, it s going to be much longer. so we re looking like that possibility is going to come into effect about this time next wieck where there will be no flights from the u.s. into china. it is not good timing especially when you consider what is three weeks away, the winter olympics. this is supposed to be that opportunity for beijing to show they have it under control. they have harsh restrictions in place, something folks describe as brutal attacks.
week. what gives? so it wasn t just the first time they used it. the circuit breaker rule was new on monday. they had to use it the first day they had it. they had to use it twice in a week and now are suspending it. what the chinese have been learning over the last year is the government can t just tell investors what stock prices should be. before we had this huge drop in chinese markets there was a huge bubble, stocks more than doubling in a year. china isn t really a normal stock market. it s very hard to get your money in and out of the country, in and out of the stock market. you have had emerging middle class pouring money into it. now they realize there wasn t a good reason for stocks to go up like that. they are tying to get their money out. the natural result is a stock market crash. the government there has been trying to delay and prevent that but fundamentally you can t stop it forever. there has been an impact here domestically which we will talk about next hour. we w