The Script has Flipped
Trends and trajectories matter. Imagine two countries: one country has decided to open tourism without visas for the citizens of 73 countries, an open-arms policy to foreign tourists that enables them to stay 14 days visa-free. Those transiting through to a third country can stay for 240 hours or 10 days without a visa.
The second country, conversely, has recently introduced a “visa integrity fee”, a US$250 charge levied in addition to the US$185 cost of the nonimmigrant visa itself for tourists; it has also established the policy of requiring tourists from certain countries to pay US$15,000 bonds before they visit. This “visa bond” program will affect both business and tourism visas for citizens of countries whose tourists have had high rates of visa overstays. Tourists who pay this bond will be able to recover their bond upon their departure. This nation is keen on curbing illegal immigration, so perhaps this policy makes some sense to address this issue. Another new policy from this second country involves enhanced screening and vetting for foreign citizens applying to study in the country. The applicants will be required to provide all social media identifiers such as usernames and handles for the last five years on their application forms. In addition, they must make their social media profiles public to allow for review. That country is asking their consular officials to carry out comprehensive and thorough vetting of applicants and their online activities. The rationale is that they are looking for any kind of hostility towards the nation, its people, culture, government or institutions. I would analyze more realistically and mention that any kind of hostility towards or criticism of a certain joined-at-the-hip ally, Israel, and its inhumane, murderous activities will likely also squash the application and indeed is most likely the real objective of the entire policy.
Of course the reader understands that this second country is the US, and perhaps can glean that the first is the People’s Republic of China. As an American of a certain age, one that grew up during the Cold War, these changes are no less than a complete flipping of the script. Perhaps not a complete flipping, but certainly trends and trajectories are moving in opposite directions from what they once were. The US was once the torchbearer of liberalism, of freedom of movement, speech, and ideas, of citizens and residents who were confident in their rights to criticize, protest, and influence the country in a direction that followed the ideas and values of its establishment.
The USSR and Communist China under Mao were the opposite, countries that crushed free speech and opposition to one-party rule, that severely curtailed the ability of foreigners to enter, move freely, meet with citizens, etc. Now, the US hasn’t quite descended to the tight restrictions in China and the USSR during the Cold War regarding strict visa and entry controls, state-assigned guides and translators, restricted movement, controlled social contact with locals and surveillance and monitoring, but it has certainly taken some steps in that direction. Again, trends and trajectories matter.
Visa-Free Tourism Policy: Introduction
The Chinese have a saying, “A good start is half the road to success.” This maxim is an accurate descriptor for the expanded Chinese Visa Free Travel Program, though it must be emphasized that a continuation of the policy will be necessary to cement the benefits of this wise program for the Chinese nation and people. In recent years, no, recent decades, many realist analysts have noticed and spoken out glowingly about a wide variety of patient, pragmatic, successful policies rolled out by the CPC (Communist Party of China). These policies often follow a trial-and-expand approach; this hallmark of Chinese policymaking allows the CPC to test and evaluate reforms in limited, controlled environments before making necessary adjustments and implementing them nationwide. Examples of this trial-and-expand strategy include the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in 2013, which experimented with financial liberalization, reformed foreign investment rules, and streamlined customs. By 2023, the policy had been expanded to 21 additional FTZs. The Hukou (Household Registration) reform was trialed in smaller cities in the 2000s, relaxing residency requirements to facilitate urbanization. This policy was expanded by 2024 to most cities besides Beijing and Shanghai. Green Vehicle Subsidies were piloted in Shenzhen and Shanghai in the 2010s, and the resulting increases in EV adoption led to the expansion of the policy nationwide. The Visa-Free Tourism policy is following and has followed a similar approach of a limited trial followed by expansion, but first, what exactly is it?
The Chinese Visa-Free Tourism Policy has a number of components. First, let’s look at the current status of the policy. According to the State Council of the People’s Republic of China, in a press conference on Wednesday, July 30, 2025, Wang Zhizhong, head of the National Immigration Administration (NIA), announced that China introduced visa-free entry and mutual visa exemption agreements with 75 countries as part of its efforts to streamline visa rules and promote international exchange. Visitors from these countries will enjoy 14-day visa-free visits for business or tourism purposes. The purpose of the policy was to streamline visa rules and promote international exchange. The second component of the program is visa-free transit. During the press conference, Wang Zhizhong stated that the number of countries eligible for visa-free transit to China has increased to 55, while the number of entry ports has expanded to 60 across 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. He went on to assert that the permitted duration for visa-free transit has been extended to 240 hours or 10 days. Wang emphasized that these new visa measures have made travel smoother and easier for foreigners visiting China for tourism, business and other purposes. There are some key conditions, and work, study and journalism are not included in the purposes of this program. He also pointed out that these enhanced visa rules would strengthen exchanges and interactions between Chinese citizens and foreign visitors from all over the world, nurturing closer ties and deeper friendship. “Many foreign visitors have gained a true and full understanding of China through their firsthand experiences,” Wang said.
The introduction and recent expansion of this phased, strategic policy seems to me a masterstroke that will provide many benefits to the Chinese nation and people, not to mention those foreign citizens who want to visit China without jumping through restrictive visa-policy hoops. I will try to explore some of the potential benefits to China from this policy, explain why the US has been excluded by elaborating on reciprocity, and compare recent tourism trends in the two countries and current global perceptions of the desirability of tourism in the two.
Visa-Free Tourism Policy: Benefits to China
The visa-free policy will provide significant benefits to China, some obvious and concrete, and others less visible and more related to soft power issues, though no less important. We will begin with the obvious, concrete benefits, try to keep them brief, and go on to explore some of the less apparent but no less significant, longer lasting benefits.
First, one of the clearest concrete benefits to China will be increased tourism and economic growth. More tourism spells more revenue and money coming into the country. These economic benefits will contribute to a variety of economic sectors, including hospitality, retail and transportation. China can expect higher hotel occupancy rates, increased demand for flights, and more spending on attractions, dining, and shopping. Increased visitors will result in higher consumption of Chinese services and goods, another real increase to GDP. More popular destination cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Xi’an and Guangzhou will certainly experience a pronounced rise in international visitors. Another often overlooked economic boost will be in medical tourism, as the new policy will facilitate easier visits for low-cost, high-quality medical procedures. Hainan Island has gone through massive developments as a hub for medical tourism; the government has designated it as a pilot zone for international patients searching for cost-effective, high-quality procedures and treatments. Furthermore, easier travel will offer foreign visitors opportunities for short-term educational, language training and university exchanges, bringing more financial benefits for China. These short-term visits can pave the way for longer term study in China. In the business sector, easier access will lead to foreign businesspeople exploring opportunities in investment, trade and collaboration. This will further integrate China into the global economy. All of these benefits will be immediate and tangible, contributing to a stronger economy for the nation and people.
The second area of benefits will be cultural and involve increased understanding and enlightenment for foreign visitors regarding China, its history, culture, traditions, food and arts. Foreign tourists will have easy access to China, a nation and civilization often thought of throughout history as being isolationist. From its physical geography, with natural boundaries like oceans, deserts and mountains surrounding it, to its long history of introspective dynasties that had no desire to integrate with the world, to the limited international engagement of the post WII period, when the CPC, fresh from the Chinese Civil War, consolidated its power and faced the Cold War and a hostile west, China has developed in relative isolation. There is great curiosity among the global population about this civilization, and increased people-to-people interactions, with tourists visiting and engaging with local communities, experiencing China’s customs and traditions, enjoying the restaurants and food culture, history, museums, historical sites, and cultural performances will give them a deeper exposure to and understanding of a previously remote culture.
Perhaps the most overlooked benefit to the Chinese nation and people of increased foreign tourism, one that is difficult or impossible to quantify and produce evidence about, is the direct counteracting, remedying and invalidating of western, mostly US, propaganda that distorts perceptions of China, its society, economy, government, and personal freedoms. Welcoming more foreign visitors will result in their witnessing the actual conditions on the ground in the country. They will then share their experiences on social media, YouTube and X, and the reverberations will begin. It’s impossible to overemphasize the effects this process will have on global perceptions.
Ron Unz published an article on December 16, 2024, in his American Pravda series: Propaganda-Hoaxes vs. Chinese Reality, in which he featured this phenomenon and how he had just recently been exposed to video-loggers and how their travels and subsequent videos provided a more realistic view of how things in China really were. He focused on the situation in Xinjiang and the Uyghur minority in that province, a key propaganda area for the west for many years. The west has employed the vilest propaganda on this topic, presenting the situation there as some sort of genocide, with millions of Uyghurs housed in “concentration camps” where they are forced to work, speak Mandarin, eat pork, and the women are forced to have sex with camp guards.
Contrary to this western storytelling, the facts of the matter speak loudly, though the absence of facts in most western media sources leave western people believing the worst things about China. In fact, numerous delegations from Muslim countries have visited Xinjiang, witnessing the economic development, social stability and ethnic unity and reporting back to the governments of their nations. They have reported that the Chinese government protects the legal rights and interests of all ethnic groups, including those of the Uyghur people. Perhaps because the same western media have little love or trust of Muslim nations, these reports are dismissed or ignored. The organic, personal video reports of western tourists will go a long way to dispel and disprove the propaganda of the west, as Ron Unz points out:
“During several years of this ongoing controversy, I failed to consider that video-loggers had become an important part of the Internet, and that some of these specialized in the stories of their foreign travels. But a commenter recently posted a couple of such videos on one of my articles, and clicking the links I discovered the easy availability of such direct personal evidence about Chinese society. There are a multitude of such channels, and I recently spent a couple of days exploring the China content of two of them. Nothing I saw much surprised me, but I think that our relations with that huge country would greatly improve if more Americans did the same.”
Ron Unz later concluded:
“Based upon the lists of YouTube recommendations and their titles, I think I could have easily found ten or even one hundred times as many other videos featuring very similar personal accounts of Western visitors traveling to Xinjiang and its major cities, or meeting with Uyghurs there or elsewhere. Our government and our media have severely discredited themselves by declaring a Uyghur “genocide” that is obviously just a preposterous propaganda-hoax.”
Although I’m not so sure about the current number of videos available on YouTube by western video-loggers visiting Xinjiang and other “controversial” areas of China, the effect of the visa-free policy will certainly increase the number of videos, posts, and tweets exponentially. These organic human experiences will be the best way to dispel the western narratives about China and counter a variety of propaganda stories endlessly paraded by western governments, academia, and media organs. There are a number of these propaganda stories worth mentioning; the western narratives should be contrasted with the realities that foreign visitors discover upon visiting. First, there are the western misconceptions about China’s “Authoritarianism” and how the CPC has fostered a repressive and closed society. In light of this inaccurate framing of the conditions in China, western tourists are often shocked to find that China is a dynamic, safe and modern society where people are free to go about their lives. In addition, they witness the effects of efficient governance, hard to miss when confronted with beautiful modern cities, extensive high-speed rail and high-tech transportation systems, and clean, safe public areas. Another propaganda narrative trumpeted by western governments, think tanks and media is that of the impending “economic collapse” of China.
Anyone paying attention should be quite confused by now that according to our propaganda organs, China has been on the edge of an economic collapse continuously since the late 1990s. The economy has in fact gone from strength to strength, and although China faces real economic challenges, like most of the world in this unstable period, visitors to China still witness bustling cities, an ever-growing middle class, and technology and manufacturing innovation centers. A third propaganda tactic could be called “chaos framing”, and it involves western media and state institutions presenting minor social protests or unrest in China as dire signs of nationwide instability. If one depended solely on exaggerated reports in the western media of bank runs, housing protests, labor rights incidents, and anti-CPC unrest, one might come to the conclusion that this is a nation that is simmering at ever higher temperatures, and an explosion must be on the near horizon. Visitors to China, however, are amazed to see one of the safest societies in the world, with ridiculously low crime rates and high public trust in the government system; people are going about their business, going to work, going to school, and achieving.
From the hard economic benefits from increased visitors, to the cultural and people-to-people exchanges with citizens of other countries, ending with the dismissing and invalidation of western propaganda about China through real-life experience of a mass of tourist visitors, this visa-free tourism will provide a great deal of upside advantages to China.
Visa Reciprocity: Why aren’t US citizens included?
Quite a number of US citizens have been surprised when confronted with the fact that they are not included among the tourists who are eligible for 14-day visa-free visits for business or tourism purposes. US citizens are included in the visa-free transit component of the visa policies, which has been extended to 240 hours with proof of an air ticket to a third country. The surprise of these Americans soon changes into disappointment, mild anger, and a victim mindset. “How dare the Chinese not include us in their program? Look at how many Chinese have come to the US for study and travel; the numbers are certainly much higher than those of Americans visiting China.” Again, trends and trajectories matter, and these people are mostly unaware of the changing trends and restrictions that the US has placed on Chinese coming to the US. China views this decision to exclude US citizens from being eligible for 14-day visa-free visits as a form of reciprocity.
A brief examination of the changing US visa policies towards Chinese citizens in this century provides a clear rationale for the exclusion of US citizens. In the early 2000s, after China’s entry into the WTO, the US started issuing 1-year multiple entry visas to Chinese tourists and business visitors, a reflection of growing economic ties. Student visas were also extended from 6 months to 1 year in duration, facilitating academic exchanges. At the time of the Beijing Olympics (2008), the US opened increased visa processing centers in China; this reduced wait time. These looser restrictions were mirrored by China’s visa policies towards the US. In 2014, a US-China reciprocal visa agreement was made, and tourist/business visas (B1/B2) were extended to 10 years in duration with multiple entries. Student visas (F1) were extended from 1 year to 5 years. The result of this policy was a significant increase in Chinese tourism to the US, peaking at 3 million visitors in 2019. In the first Trump Administration, the US started imposing stricter visa restrictions on the citizens of China. It started with increased scrutiny of Chinese students, researchers and professionals in chosen fields. In 2018, Chinese graduate students in STEM fields saw their visa validity shortened from 5 years to 1 year. At the same time, processing times became longer and rejections much more common. In May of 2020, Trump issued Proclamation 10043, which banned Chinese students associated with universities with military links from receiving visas. When the COVID Pandemic hit in 2020, the US suspended all visa processing in China; this led to a massive logjam.
In the years following COVID, when the US was reopening to tourism and overseas students, the Biden Administration didn’t just continue the restrictions from the Trump Administration, it tightened them, maintaining Proclamation 10043 and increasing scrutiny of Chinese students and professionals in STEM, especially AI, semiconductors and quantum computing. In 2023, B1/B2 tourist/business visa rejections for Chinese citizens reached 50%. These creeping and continuous restrictions on Chinese citizens visiting the US paint a clear picture of why US citizens are not included in the new visa-free tourism policy, for China maintains that it bases its visa policies on principles of mutual benefit and reciprocity.
Tourism Trends: US vs. China
Tourism trends for the past decade or two are difficult to track effectively, mostly due to the COVID Pandemic and the resulting collapse in international travel, by far the largest in recorded history. This intense drop was felt globally, with international tourist arrivals around the world falling from 1.46 billion in pre-COVID 2019 to 409 million in 2020, a 72% decrease. US international arrivals fell by 76%, from 79.4 million international arrivals in 2019 to 19 million in 2020. International arrivals in China fell by a whopping 80%, from 136 million in 2019 to 27.2 million in 2020. In 2021 and 2022, both countries saw rebounds, though it’s worth noting that the US initially experienced a much larger increase in inbound arrivals than China, likely due to the Chinese zero-COVID border rules. In 2024, US international tourist arrivals reached 91%, while China’s inbound visits reached 97% of 2019 levels. At that point, China had recovered more of its inbound international tourists than the US.
The effects of recent changes in policies of the US and China on inbound international tourism are becoming most apparent in 2025, not surprising perhaps, as the trends and trajectories of visa policies are moving in diametrically opposite directions. In Q1 of 2025, inbound international tourist visits to China soared, reaching 35 million, a 19.6% year-over-year increase. This extremely strong momentum is likely due to the relaxed visa policies, easing of travel restrictions and simplified entry. If China’s Q1 growth in international tourism holds constant for the entire year, inbound international visits would reach 157.9 million, far above pre-COVID 2019 levels (136 million), making 2025 the strongest year for international visits on record. Similarly, tourism revenue would reach an all time high, reaching US$112.7 billion, far above the 2019 level of US$101 billion. This scenario is highly likely, and it demonstrates the wisdom of China’s new visa policies.
In the US, the US Travel and Tourism Association reports that US international visits in the first half of 2025 show a notable decline. There has been a 3.3% decline in international visits in Q1 2025 compared to Q1 2024. The main driver of this decline in sheer numbers has been a sharp reduction in visits from Canada, but a breakdown of a range of countries clearly highlights widespread, substantial decreases in international arrivals. In Q1 alone, visits are down from: Germany (-28%), Spain (-25%), United Kingdom (-18%), Canada (-17%), South Korea (-15%), Australia (-7%). Indeed, in March, 2025 alone, inbound tourism to the US fell 11.6% year-over-year. There are a number of contributing factors to the slump in inbound international tourism to the US. These begin with obstacles related to policy and visa barriers. The US has become notorious internationally for long wait times for visitor visas (B1/B2), with citizens of many countries facing delays and wait times of hundreds of days.
This is occurring at a time when other countries are streamlining their visa systems and expanding visa-free entry. A second factor is geopolitical factors related to the Trump Administration. A number of key source markets, including Canada, Western Europe and East Asia have been deterred by the foreign policy and tariff policies of the current Administration. Rhetoric from the US that is perceived as hostile to foreigners and anti-immigrant is hampering discretionary tourism. Economic factors are a third contributor to the decline, with a strong US dollar making trips to the US more costly, Additionally, inflation in source countries has led to decreases in long-distance overseas travel. Other destinations are seen to provide cheaper, more accessible and culturally rich travel experiences. High airfares and negative perceptions about US airport inefficiencies, cancellations and congestion have also played a part. A final factor that has led to reduced tourism in the US is the growing sense that the US is an increasingly insecure and inconvenient destination. Foreign tourists cite concerns about urban crime rates, gun violence and social unrest as reasons to choose other destinations, and reports from travelers about long waits at customs, invasive questioning and demands to authorize monitoring of digital devices has made US entry more stressful.
Conclusion
Like in so many other aspects, trends and trajectories of these two countries at present, it seems that China is pursuing rational policies and practices related to international inbound tourism that will benefit the nation and people, while the US is bumbling along foolishly, claiming to be working towards better outcomes for the American people, but actually swinging wildly and misguidedly, resulting in negative domestic results and foreign tourists who will choose alternatives to US travel. China’s visa-free policy, phased and strategic, aimed at better global engagement and rooted in principles of shared benefit and reciprocity, is off to an excellent start, as the evidence of increased tourism for 2025 show clearly. Enhancing global ties, promoting cultural exchange, and boosting its own international image are admirable aims, and if the current trends and trajectories carry through, it’s abundantly clear that it will be a huge success for all stakeholders, including inbound international visitors and the Chinese themselves. As the Chinese say: A good start is halfway to success: 好的開始是成功的一半