Beijing: China will allow all categories of visas to be issued starting on Wednesday, reopening its borders to foreign tourists for the first time in the three years since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
Following last month's declaration of victory over the virus by the authorities, this final cross-border control measure put in place to protect against COVID-19 has been lifted.
Insiders in the tourism sector do not anticipate a significant uptick in short-term tourism or economic growth. 2019 saw only a 0.9 percent increase in China's gross domestic product due to foreign tourism receipts.
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However, Beijing's decision to resume issuing tourist visas is part of a larger initiative to normalise two-way travel between China and the rest of the world after Beijing withdrew its travel warning to its citizens in January.
Visa-free entry will once again be available in parts of China that did not require them before the pandemic, the foreign ministry announced on Tuesday. This will include cruise ships passing through Shanghai port as well as the southern tourist island of Hainan, a longtime favourite of Russians.
Guangdong, China's most prosperous province, will once again allow foreigners from Hong Kong and Macau to enter without a visa. This is good news for high-end hotels that cater to international business travellers.
According to Vaughn Barber, chairman of the Australian Chamber of Commerce in China, "Australian businesses whose executives would like to travel here to visit their China-based teams, customers, and suppliers and to explore new business opportunities in the mainland market will benefit from China's announcement that it will resume issuing nearly all types of visas for foreigners as of tomorrow.
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Chinese events that are open to foreign visitors are starting to resume, including the Shanghai Autoshow in April and the China Development Forum in Beijing later this month. The Asian Games, which are held every four years, will also be held in the eastern city of Hangzhou in September after being postponed the previous year due to China's COVID worries.
However, potential visitors might not show up in large numbers right away.
A global survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in September revealed that unfavourable opinions of China among western democracies have become more entrenched as a result of worries about human rights, Beijing's assertive foreign policy, and suspicions surrounding the handling of COVID-19.
China is no longer a popular tourist destination, according to a China International Travel Services executive in Beijing who declined to be identified due to the delicate nature of the situation.
Commercially, foreigners' desire to organise events in China has decreased as a result of COVID because too many decisions here are influenced by politics, scaring them away.
China added 40 more nations to its list of those where group tours are permitted, bringing the total to 60, as part of a further loosening of restrictions on outbound tourism.
Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the United States are still absent from the list. As Washington and Beijing sparred over issues ranging from Russia and the Ukraine to China's military presence in the South China Sea, relations between those nations grew closer.
"I don't know how enthusiastic institutional investors will be to do so, after all the drumbeat of scary news," said Duncan Clark, founder of BDA, a Beijing-based investment consultancy. "It's common to use tourist visas to come to China on business.
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Just 115.7 million cross-border journeys took place in and out of China in 2022, of which 4.5 million were made by foreigners. In contrast, China recorded 670 million total trips in 2019 prior to the implementation of COVID, of which 97.7 million were made by foreigners.
