What’s It Like Traveling to China These Days?
China has been rolling out new visa-free programs and promising to make travel easier for foreigners. But challenges remain.
Tourists near Shichahai Lake in Beijing this month. China has been taking unusual steps to attract visitors from overseas.
Credit...Vincent Thian/Associated Press
By Vivian Wang
Reporting from Shanghai
July 31, 2024Updated 12:22 a.m. ET
By some measures, visiting China has never been easier.
China has been making a huge push to attract foreign tourists in recent months. It has rolled out a visa-free program for dozens of countries, with the list still growing. It has pledged to make it easier for visitors to pay for things, book hotels and get around.
The goal is to signal that China is open for business — and fun! — again, after three years of pandemic controls made it literally impossible for most foreigners to enter. The government is especially keen to attract visitors as it tries to rev up growth.
China also wants to show that it is still connected to the world, despite tensions with the West and the growing reach of its security apparatus at home.
In a sign of its eagerness, Beijing has offered the visa waivers to countries that have not done the same in return — a rare move for a government that usually insists on reciprocity.
But actually traveling to China can still be a major challenge. Here’s what to know:
What’s new?
China is unilaterally offering visa-free entry for 15 days to citizens from a slew of countries, mostly Western European ones like France, Germany and Spain. The program began in December and has continued to expand; Australia, New Zealand and Poland were included last month. It is set to run through 2025.
In addition, citizens of more than 50 countries, including the United States, are now eligible for visa-free transit. They can enter China for 72 or 144 hours, depending on their port of entry, if they are continuing on to other destinations.
Taxis at Daxing International Airport in Beijing. Most arrivals from overseas in the first half of this year were under a visa-free program, according to the Chinese government.
Credit...Mark R Cristino/EPA, via Shutterstock
Transit travelers must stay within certain areas. For example, people flying into Shanghai can only visit the city and the neighboring provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
China has also promised to reduce logistical headaches for foreigners. WeChat and AliPay — the so-called super apps that most Chinese use for every aspect of daily life, from digital payments to ride hailing to ordering at restaurants — can now be linked to international credit cards, not just Chinese ones. (Most businesses do not accept credit cards directly.) And in May, the government told hotels not to refuse foreign guests, which was once a common practice.
Why is China doing all this?
Simply put: It needs money.
As China’s economy slows, its consumers have been hesitant to spend, fanning fears of deflation. The government also wants to win back foreign investment, after many overseas companies were spooked by China’s long Covid lockdowns and tightening political environment. Visitors on the 15-day visa-free program are allowed not only to sight-see, but to conduct business.
Attracting more visitors would also help the government rebut accusations from the United States and other Western countries that China has become more hostile to foreigners.
Visiting a lavender field in Inner Mongolia, a region of northern China.
Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Beijing last year revised its counterespionage law to broaden the definition of spying, and state propaganda has warned that seemingly harmless foreigners might be trying to undermine China’s national security. Still, the government insists that reports of xenophobia and rising nationalism are just spin, orchestrated by countries trying to stop China’s rise.
Are more visitors coming?
In the first half of this year, there were 14.6 million arrivals from overseas, according to Chinese statistics. Most of them were visa-free.
That’s 2.5 times as many as China had during the same period last year, but well below the 24 million in the first half of 2019, before the pandemic.
China’s efforts to smooth out visitors’ experiences have also had mixed results.
On a recent Friday in Shanghai, Luka Lefevre, 24, and Charlotte Collet, 21, were cramming as much sightseeing as possible into a 10-hour layover between Paris and Vietnam. They had visited Yu Garden, a temple complex, and were taking photos on East Nanjing Road, a major shopping street.
But they’d had trouble using their phones to pay for things, and had to resort to cash, they said. They were also surprised by the ubiquitous surveillance cameras.
“For us, it’s a little bit too much, because we don’t have this in France,” Ms. Collet said. “But we know that it’s for safety.”
“For 10 hours, it’s O.K.,” Mr. Lefevre added.
Even visitors who’d figured out the Chinese apps said it had taken a while.
The Huangpu district in Shanghai last month.
Credit...Hector Retamal/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Walking along the Bund, Shanghai’s historic waterfront area, Maeline Lachaud and Nadia Hofmann, both Swiss university students, said they had linked their credit cards to AliPay while traveling through Xi’an, Chongqing and now Shanghai. The convenience was “amazing,” they said.
But Ms. Lachaud, a first-time visitor, said she had relied heavily upon Ms. Hofmann, who is minoring in Chinese studies and had visited once before. She hadn’t realized that AliPay had to be used not only to pay, but also to order at restaurants, and that the in-app menus were in Chinese.
Many major tourist attractions across China, such as the Forbidden City in Beijing, also require advance reservations through platforms like WeChat that are largely in Chinese. (Because of the super apps’ ubiquity, many websites in China are poorly maintained.)
“China’s not for beginners,” Ms. Hofmann said.
Vivian Wang is a China correspondent based in Beijing, where she writes about how the country’s global rise and ambitions are shaping the daily lives of its people. More about Vivian Wang
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