Tourism from Shanghai to Beijing: foreign visitors double thanks to visa -free entry
According to recently released data, China’s visa-free policy for 75 countries is bearing fruit in the first half of 2025, key to revive the local economy after the COVID-19 pandemic. The largest numbers are from South Korea, Japan, the United States, Thailand, and Russia.
Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) – The expansion of visa-free entry into China is starting to yield the results Beijing was hoping for. Results for the first half of 2025 show strong increases in foreign tourist arrivals in the country’s main ports of entry compared to a year ago, this according to data cited by the South China Morning Post.
The growth is said to be driven by the ever-increasing number of countries admitted to the programme that allows entry to China without a visa for stays of up to 30 days. With the addition of Azerbaijan, the number will rise to 75 on 16 July.
Since the start of the year, 1.4 million visitors have entered the country at Shanghai airport alone without needing a visa. The number reaches 2.6 million if travellers from countries excluded from the exemption are counted. This is a 44.8 per cent rise over the same period last year.
At Beijing airport, visa-free entries numbered 840,000 (twice that for the first half of 2024), while Chengdu airport welcomed 287,000 arrivals, up by 120 per cent. The main countries of origin are South Korea, Japan, the United States, Thailand, and Russia.
Bloomberg reports that since the beginning of this year, travellers from some neighbouring countries such as Vietnam, Mongolia and Malaysia were significantly more numerous than in 2024.
For the news agency, geopolitical factors are still influencing the choices of tourists. The governments of the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Australia have issued travel warnings for their citizens urging them to exercise great caution when in China. This has had the effect of slowing the growth of tourism in the East Asian country.
Easier entry requirements are part of a broader strategy, which, in addition to encouraging tourism, aims to revive the Chinese economy, already in the doldrums due to low domestic demand, even before the start of the trade war.
What is more, Beijing is trying to improve its image abroad, clouded by growing geopolitical tensions.
According to the Democracy Perception Index, an annual study published in May that measures the perception of the quality of democracies in the world, these efforts have not been in vain.
In many countries, in fact, trust in China is growing; in particular, the survey shows that China seems to have a better reputation than the United States in most of the countries involved in the study.
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