China’s Inbound Tourism Heats Up in Summer Travel Surge

A report from Xinhua on Aug. 13th, 2024:

“China Travel” has caused a sensation on global social media. In the vlogs of many influencers, foreign visitors can be seen strolling through Chinese night markets to try specialties, dancing in squares alongside locals, taking self-driving taxis, experiencing high-speed trains and having food delivered by drones.

According to the National Immigration Administration, the country recorded about 14.64 million entries by foreigners in the first half of 2024, a year-on-year increase of 152.7 percent. Among these entries, more than 8.54 million were facilitated by visa-free policies.

The inbound travel surge was due in part to the increase in the number of countries enjoying China’s visa-free policy.

China has added tourists from more countries to the visa-free entry list this year and currently implements a 72/144-hour visa-free transit policy for people from 54 countries.

“We will do more to encourage people-to-people exchanges, and give foreign tourists a better experience in China,” Xie Feng, Chinese ambassador to the United States, said recently in an interview with Newsweek magazine.

The People’s Bank of China, the Chinese central bank, has encouraged major mobile payment service providers such as Alipay and Tenpay to optimize work processes to facilitate the binding of credit cards and simplify personal identity authentication while protecting personal information. Additionally, the upper limit for the value of a single transaction and the annual cap for mobile payments have also been raised to 5,000 U.S. dollars and 50,000 U.S. dollars, respectively.

The Ministry of Commerce and six other government departments have issued a circular on further facilitating accommodation for overseas travelers in China, stressing no restrictions for hotels to receive foreign guests and calling for improving registration services and simplifying information collection.