JF

It is basically incontrovertible that China shut down domestic travel to an immense degree and paid an enormous up-front cost to do it, possibly unprecedented in human history, and continued international travel. Its close connection with Iran caused an early outbreak there.

Maybe, maybe, the government wouldn't have been able to cancel outbound flights. Certainly the United States and the UK could not do so, and indeed were never as willing as China to endanger domestic commerce. But it does appear that China made a policy choice here.

It would be a little problematic for it to cancel international flights, because there was so much travel going on that there were many many foreigners in China that needed to leave and many Chinese abroad who needed to come back. It would have been great if it had though.

That being said so much of the non-Chinese media and establishments were so blasé about COVID until they saw what happened in Iran, and especially Italy. So it's likely that a total flight ban including international flights to and from the PRC would only slightly delay things

maybe give certain countries more time to prepare, which might have helped, but it's likely that they'd still have acted not so differently, and not taken it seriously until they saw an example outside of China. The feeling was that China, because it is authoritarian, must be

...overreacting, while, Iran, a poor, beleaguered, pariah state was simply not up to the task of addressing the public health issue. Italy was pivotal.