China’s Door Opening Even Wider to Foreign Visitors, Businesses

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

China has recently unveiled a series of initiatives, including broadened visa-free policies and eased investment restrictions, to open its doors even wider to foreign visitors, investors and business doers.

As the country presses forward with its high-quality opening-up policies, an enormous boost is widely expected in global trade, investment, and people-to-people exchanges.

This year’s China International Import Expo (CIIE) displays China’s clear commitment to expanding imports and promoting trade liberalization. It also serves as a platform for China to introduce new measures to improve the business environment for foreign enterprises, from easing trade policies to supporting cross-border e-commerce and facilitating smoother customs procedures.

Over the past six years, the annual expo has become a signature event of China’s high-level opening up and an emblem of its ongoing endeavors to build an open global economy.

China is also on the move to make visits by foreign tourists and businessmen much easier. Starting from Nov. 8, citizens holding ordinary passports from Slovakia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein and South Korea will be able to travel to China visa-free.

This move, coupled with other visitor-friendly measures, promises to give a further boost to foreign arrivals. In the third quarter this year, China registered an influx of 8.186 million foreigners with 4.885 million of them visa-free, which represent year-on-year upsurges of 48.8 percent and 78.6 percent respectively.

Substantial strides in fostering a more favorable environment for foreign investors have also been made recently. The new edition of China’s national negative list for foreign investment, which took effect Friday, eliminated the remaining restrictions on the manufacturing sector.

The country has thereby removed all barriers to foreign investment in manufacturing, a testament to its global leadership in manufacturing openness.

An ever opening up China, as multiple pundits have observed, is a tremendous boon for the rest of world, adding impetus to global economic recovery.