Citizens of five European countries and Malaysia have been granted visa-free entry to China.
From 1 December 2023 Dutch, French, German, Italian, and Spanish citizens, as well as Malaysians will be able to visit China visa-free for up to fifteen days. The new policy is taking place on a trial basis, to be reviewed in a year’s time.
China’s tourist numbers are massively behind what they were pre-pandemic. The first half of 2023 saw just 8.4 million foreign visits to China, less than a hundredth of 2019’s foreign visitor numbers, which stood at 977 million albeit across the whole of that pre-Covid-19 year. It is hoped the new visa relaxations will improve the situation.
Background
Before the pandemic, China had loosened up visa restrictions for citizens of Brunei and Singapore but this was reversed among strict and sweeping anti-Covid measures that saw all arrivals subject to quarantines. Despite those being lifted earlier this year, and Brunei and Singapore back on the visa-free list, China’s visitor numbers have spectacularly failed to recover.
Japan too used to have visa-free visitor rights for China, but these have not been re-instated post-pandemic. Neither are the Chinese that keen to go to Japan. Travel Tomorrow reported recently that Chinese public perception of Japan has suffered due to Japan’s release of treated nuclear waste from Fukushima into the ocean, something that highly food-oriented Chinese tourists have been revolted by.
“High-level opening up”
The choice of countries to whom China has now granted visa-free access is interesting, given that China wants not only to promote tourism but “to facilitate the high-quality development of Chinese and foreign personnel exchanges and high-level opening up to the outside world,” according to a briefing by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning. The statement added that the 15 visa free days could only be used for “business, tourism, family visit and transit purposes”.
It will be noted that business comes first in that list and that focus has been reflected in trade fairs and high-level meetings attended by high profile entrepreneurs and business leaders such as Elon Musk from Tesla and Apple’s Tim Cook.
Reactions
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna has also been in Beijing for discussions around these issues and others. She embraced China’s decision to give French visitors fifteen days visa-free as “excellent news” and said France would reciprocate and help to “facilitate exchanges” by rewarding Chinese students educated to post-graduate level to remain in France for another five years.
Germany’s ambassador to Beijing, Patricia Flor, praised the “unprecedented” ease with which Germans would now be able to travel to China, adding on social media site X that Germany hopes “the Chinese government will implement the measures announced today for all EU member states. This would be an important improvement of our citizens’ mobility, enabling deeper personal, cultural, and economic relations between China and the EU.”
That hope was echoed by the Chinese branch of the EU Chamber of Commerce, which hailed the new visa relaxations as “a tangible and practical improvement, which will also increase business confidence.”
