I am curious, are members who are sending cards from tags experiencing major delays also? I would assume so.
I have been receiving quite a few cards from China, official cards mostly but see that the number of Chinese and Russia members seem to have increased on the tags. I know many other countries aren’t suspended from sending to China and Russia , and I also realize that on tags we can send to China, but not Russia because of our postal restriction.
Sharing my personal experience:
In late November last year, I sent a postcard to my parents in China from London. After rounds and rounds of transit and static disinfection, it arrives in the destination city in mid-February. Then it just stayed in the post office for more than a month, until a note was sent to the address, instructing the recipient to pick it up at the post office 5km away. So this postcard took 4 months on the road.
My mom went to the post office and saw LOTS OF backlogged international mails, and the staff told her not to have international mails since they were experiencing extreme delays. And it was even before the massive lockdown in Shanghai. I can’t imagine the situation now.
Official card suspension to China seems fairly reasonable to me, as it takes much longer to arrive and affects the senders’ slots. But for tag games, the delay would only affect the recipient but not the sender.
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The formula for the maximum number of expired due postcards Rx, if there is one, is unknown. Both the formula and the suspension are human decisions.
In my opinion, if a member joined in games on the forum, it means at least that he/she is active and believes that he/she can receive cards normally. They are a little group of the members, who has an available address and a working local post system, understanding the rule of “register each card you received” (It is unfortunately that on other apps I saw some members that seem don’t care this rule much).
So the “receiving rate” of them may may higher than that of the whole member group of P.R.China.
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Perhaps, reduce the expiration days from 60 to 30 for Chinese addresses. Continue to give us China addresses, but if the card is not registered within 30 days, we deserve to be able to request a different address.
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At least I am. Only 1 of my cards from tags and lotteries has made it to China in whole year of 2022. If I counted right I still have 6 cards travelling sent between February and July.
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Yes, all mail to China is affected, regardless of the reason why it was sent.
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Unfortunately that would make the backlog even bigger. Because for every expired postcard a replacement card is send. As @vule101 has written:
Making the time until expiring shorter would increase the number of backlogged (“lost”) cards even faster.
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118 days but finally arrived 
BTW: that was my only expired card to China sent this year. I still have 4 expired cards from last year to China, but all of these 4 swappers seems to have left postcrossing months ago and have more sent cards than received ones on their profile.
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It is true, but if the expired arrives later (and the new one, too) one won’t get a card for the next one registered. Else the sent / received ratio would never balance again once a card expired (and never arrived).
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The quote from the FAQ is from the senders perspective, not the receivers.
Another way the suspension could make sense: If one believes that the expired postcards sent to China in May and June are lost, and if one doesn’t want many users in China who get automatically deactivated by the system only to open a new account when the postal service recovers (lost postcards are still lost).
Probably of low priority on the agenda, it may be worthwhile to reach out to users in China through email, conduct a simple questionnaire (say, user satisfaction) or update them about the current status. The main purpose is to try and keep them engaged. We don’t want those expired postcards to arrive later this year but after they quit.
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That is a good point but if the problem is the postal system, there is nothing Postcrossing can do…
My only card travelling to China is at 110 days. Recipient has not registered anything since March, last seen 1 month ago, and has 20 (twenty!) more sent than received…
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I just wanted to let you know that curiously my postcard sent from Poland (on traveling mode) on 28 December 2021 arrived in China yesterday 23 July 2022. It reached its destination in 207 days!! 
The postcrosser did not log in for several months, but then registered my card yesterday! There is still hope for other expired postcards! 
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That’s very true - but, at the same time, if cards to China simply don’t arrive, I see no real other choice than to temporarily not hand out the addresses until the postal system operates again… Personally, I’d be fine with drawing and sending to Chinese addresses, but, for someone who can only send five cards at a time, it must be very frustrating to have one or two of those permanently (because two months are a loooong time under those circumstances) stuck!
I’m wondering: is there a technical possibility to ensure a selective block of Chinese addresses for new members who can send, say, less than 10 cards at a time, or something?!? That would make sure our Chinese friends can still receive cards, while not disengaging those Postcrossers who will be affected most by having cards travel disproportionately long…
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Oh, when this decision first be applied, I fell confused and panic.
Now I only want to say, since Jun 16, up to now, I have received 5 cards!
I hope our addresses would be sent to other users as soon as possible. Of course, it depend on if our chinese postal route could run well. I just show I can receive it normally and look forward that things would go in a good direction.
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It’s not only China, but also other countries like Russia…… I would say, leave it as it is. If they not arrive, they not arrive, if they arrive, hurray!
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97 days but received.
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I was wondering too, my cards to Russina always take longer time
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It seems that the more we think about the China suspension, the less it makes sense. The gambit here may be for those China-bound postcards sent in the two months before the suspension to indeed go missing/unregistered in a year.
Conceptually, that is a straightforward direction. The issue may be that it’s of low priority. Meanwhile, it seems that a balance needs to be struck among these factors:
- On the destination
- Median travel time for that country/region
- On the origin
- Total exchanged postcards, that is, the “rareness” of the origin
- At a user level
- Number of received postcards
R
- Number of received postcards
For example, let’s consider the specific case of “rare” origins. Given the fact that they are highly coveted, I wonder how, on one hand, the higher likelihood of receiving a rare-origin postcard due to higher number of slots for a veteran may, on the other hand, interact with similar higher likelihood due to preferential address assignment of postally more reliable destinations for a novice.
The bottom line is, additional rules for address assignment should not incentivize duplicate accounts.