WASHINGTON (AP) – Foreign tourists are returning to China after the country relaxes its visa policy to an unprecedented level. Citizens from 74 countries can enter China for up to 30 days without a visa. This is a big jump from previous regulations.
The government is steadily increasing Enlarge your visa-free entries To increase tourism, the economy and its soft power. According to the National Immigration Agency, more than 20 million foreign visitors entered in 2024 without a visa.
“This really helps people travel because it's very troublesome to apply for a visa and go through the process,” said Shavaze, a Georgian style living in Austria, during a recent visit to the heavenly temple in Beijing.
While most tourist destinations are filled with far more domestic tourists than foreigners, travel agencies and tour guides are now seeking a larger influx in anticipation of summer holiday audiences coming to China.
“I'm actually overwhelmed by the tour and have a hard time keeping up,” says Gao Jun, a veteran English-speaking tour guide with over 20 years of experience. To meet the growing demand, he launched a new business to train anyone interested in becoming an English-speaking tour guide. “I can't handle them all myself,” he said.
rear Lifting strict Covid-19 restrictionsChina reopened its borders to tourists in early 2023, but only 13.8 million people visited in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.
30 days for many people in Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East
China announced in December 2023 Visa-free entry for citizens of France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia. Almost everything in Europe has been added since. Travelers from Five Latin American countries and Uzbekistan They qualified last month, and then four of them have moved to the Middle East. Azerbaijan has been added, and the total will increase to 75 on July 16th.
Approximately two-thirds of the country are allowed to enter without a visa based on a one-year trial.
For Norwegian traveller Øystein Sporsheim, this means his family will no longer have to travel back and forth between the Chinese embassy in Oslo to apply for a tourist visa, a time-consuming and costly process that two children are towing. “They don't open very often, so it was much more difficult,” he said.
“The new visa policy is 100% beneficial to us,” said Jenny Zhao, managing director at WildChina, which specializes in boutiques and luxury routes for international travelers. She said the business is up 50% compared to before the pandemic.
According to Zhao, the US is the current business market, accounting for around 30% of its current business, while European travelers account for 15-20% of its clients. “We're very optimistic,” Zhao said. “I hope these benefits continue.”
Trip.com Group, a Shanghai-based online travel agency, said the visa-free policy has significantly boosted tourism. Airlines, hotels and other bookings on the website for travel to China doubled in the first three months of this year compared to the same period last year, with 75% of visitors from visa-free regions.
Despite their relatively close ties with the continent and China, they are not eligible for visa-free entry.
North Americans and others in transit can enter for 10 days
People from 10 countries that are not in the visa-free scheme have another option. The policy is restricted to 60 ports of entry, according to the country's National Immigration Bureau.
The transportation policy applies to 55 countries, but most are on the 30-day visa-free entry list. It offers more restrictive options to citizens from 10 non-normal countries, including the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Sweden, Russia, the UK, Ukraine, Indonesia, Canada, the US and Mexico.
Apart from the UK, Sweden is the only other high-income European country that did not create a 30-day list. The connection with China has been frayed since the verdict The Chinese Communist Party has sentenced Swedish book seller Gui Minhai to prison for 10 years In 2020, the GUI disappeared from a beach home in Thailand in 2015, but appeared in police custody in mainland China a few months later.
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Associated Press writer Ken Moritsugu and video producer Liu Zheng contributed to this report.
