China will resume issuing visas to tourists and other foreigners, a significant step in the country’s move to rejoin the world and leave its stringent Covid restrictions behind. Know more:
China will resume issuing visas to tourists and other foreigners, a significant step in the country’s move to rejoin the world and leave its stringent Covid restrictions behind.
Reopening to tourists is a highly symbolic sign China is leaving its absolutist Covid Zero regime behind. The strategy, which involved frequent lockdowns, mass testing and an effectively closed border weighed on economic growth, particularly last year. It was abruptly scrapped in early December, after protests across multiple Chinese cities and as the economic hit worsened.
Since abandoning Covid Zero, the Communist Party has been prioritizing a return to strong growth, with China’s new Premier Li Qiang calling for more effort to meet a 5 percent expansion target for 2023 at a meeting of the national legislature this week. Travelers from China were among the biggest spenders globally pre-pandemic, and their absence hammered tourism-reliant nations from Southeast Asia to Europe. The country itself was also seeing a steady increase in foreign tourists before Covid, with market and consumer data provider Statista showing roughly 145.3 million international arrivals in China in 2019, up from 141.2 million the previous year.
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