WASHINGTON: China will once again start issuing a range of visas to foreigners as of Wednesday (Mar 15), the country's embassy in Washington said, a major easing of travel restrictions in force since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The move marks the latest step towards reopening China to the outsid
WASHINGTON: China will once again start issuing a range of visas to foreigners as of Wednesday , the country's embassy in Washington said, a major easing of travel restrictions in force since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The updated policy will also allow for the resumption of visa-free travel for those arriving in cruise ships to Shanghai, as well as for certain tourist groups from Hong Kong, Macao and countries within the ASEAN regional grouping, the notice said. China received 65.7 million international visitors in 2019, according to data from the UN World Tourism Organization, before the pandemic led the country to seal itself off from the rest of the world.
While most other countries began fully reopening their economies and welcoming international travelers earlier, China only began emerging from its strict COVID-19 containment policies in late 2022, after rare demonstrations against President Xi Jinping's signature zero-COVID strategy broke out across the country.
Those protests in late November expanded into calls for more political freedoms, with some even calling for Xi to resign, turning into the most widespread opposition to communist rule since the 1989 democracy uprising that the military crushed.In early December, Chinese authorities effectively ended the regime of mass testing, lockdowns and long quarantines - but the abrupt reversal led to a
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