China is stepping up efforts to court international tourists as part of a broader push to boost domestic spending. However, for travelers to take advantage, Beijing still has more work to do.
Last month, nine government bodies led by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce introduced new policies to woo overseas visitors. They promised to expand the number of countries granted unilateral visa-free entry beyond the 50 percent it already allows, as well as encourage ubiquitous online platforms, including ride-hailing apps and food-delivery firms, to offer more language options for users unable to read Chinese.
Officials are right to address the digital divide. It is one of the biggest challenges for vacationers navigating a completely different online landscape. It is not just a language issue. While the digital ecosystem is highly advanced and serves hundreds of millions, it was built for people who have local identification, mobile phone numbers and bank accounts. Something as simple as buying a train ticket might not be possible for tourists without standing in line, creating unnecessary stress for holidaymakers otherwise ready to dive into fresh experiences.
Illustration: Yusha
China is also a near-cashless society where most people can go about their daily lives with only their phones for payment. This is not the norm in most countries. Go to Europe or the US and you could whip out your credit card or hand over cash. However, in China, even visitors who have dutifully linked their credit cards to the most popular payment platforms would need help when something goes wrong.
The government is aware of the issues. In 2023, under pressure for years from regulators wanting to bolster the economy, Alipay (支付寶) and WeChat Pay (微信支付) — the two biggest digital wallet providers — allowed visitors to link their international Visa or Mastercard accounts. In theory, they should have been able to pay like locals, but friction remained. That is why, in a separate announcement, 11 agencies including the cyberspace regulator laid out a two-year framework for removing these obstacles.
That would be impossible without the backing of Ant Group Co (螞蟻集團) and Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), the two companies behind Alipay and WeChat Pay, respectively. They need to up their game in terms of support. Some solutions could include physical kiosks at airports staffed by multilingual staff who could help travelers make trial payments and 24-hour hotlines to troubleshoot when the apps get glitchy.
A reliable fix could help lift foreign arrivals above pre-pandemic levels. After reopening its borders in January 2023 following a three-year shutdown, Beijing began to loosen visa rules to revive business and tourism. However, although the total number of border crossings — including trips made by Chinese nationals — hit a record high last year, international arrivals have not reached their 2019 peak.
That is not surprising. Appealing holiday destinations should project a sense of openness, warmth, and accessibility. That was hardly China’s image during the pandemic, when it was the subject of many unfavorable headlines. An ongoing geopolitical tussle with the US has not been helping either.
Weighed down by an economic slump, it was smart of officials to reverse a long-standing approach of granting visa-free access largely to countries that offered the same deal to China. The new open-door policy did not work immediately, but last year, the number of visitors who took advantage of the scheme rose by 50 percent, official data show, giving a boost to tourism revenue.
China should continue to add countries to the list if it is serious about becoming a compelling place to visit. Having already relaxed the rules for Australia, Canada, and the UK — Western countries with which it has sparred diplomatically — Beijing should consider waiving visas for Americans as a gesture of goodwill when Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and US President Donald Trump meet in May.
To become a more attractive destination, access must go beyond permission to enter. With Chinese digital life so divorced from the rest of the world, travelers must feel confident about doing basic things like booking taxis or paying for meals. Beijing has said it is committed to making the experience as hassle-free as possible. Now it has to deliver.
Juliana Liu is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion’s Asia team, covering corporate strategy and management in the region. She was previously CNN’s senior business editor for Asia, and a correspondent at BBC News and Reuters. This column reflects the personal views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Weeks into the craze, nobody quite knows what to make of the OpenClaw mania sweeping China, marked by viral photos of retirees lining up for installation events and users gathering in red claw hats. The queues and cosplay inspired by the “raising a lobster” trend make for irresistible China clickbait. However, the West is fixating on the least important part of the story. As a consumer craze, OpenClaw — the AI agent designed to do tasks on a user’s behalf — would likely burn out. Without some developer background, it is too glitchy and technically awkward for true mainstream adoption,
On Monday, a group of bipartisan US senators arrived in Taiwan to support the nation’s special defense bill to counter Chinese threats. At the same time, Beijing announced that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had invited Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) to visit China, a move to make the KMT a pawn in its proxy warfare against Taiwan and the US. Since her inauguration as KMT chair last year, Cheng, widely seen as a pro-China figure, has made no secret of her desire to interact with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and meet with Xi, naming it a
Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) took the stage at a protest rally on Sunday in front of the Presidential Office Building in Taipei in support of former TPP chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲), who has been sentenced to 17 years in jail for corruption and embezzlement. Huang told the crowd that Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) had sent a message of support the previous day, saying she would be traveling from the south to Taipei: If the protest continued into the evening, she had said, she would show up. The rally was due to end
A delegation of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) officials led by Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) is to travel to China tomorrow for a six-day visit to Jiangsu, Shanghai and Beijing, which might end with a meeting between Cheng and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The trip was announced by Xinhua news agency on Monday last week, which cited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) Director Song Tao (宋濤) as saying that Cheng has repeatedly expressed willingness to visit China, and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee and Xi have extended an invitation. Although some people have been speculating about a potential Xi-Cheng
RSS