Tourists visit the artistic district 798 in Beijing, the capital of China, July 16, 2025. (Xinhua/Li Xin)
Lisa Cardinaux, a young Lausanne physics student, chose China this summer for her very first trip to Asia. “China is not a very expensive destination, and then now there is no need for a visa. So we were able to leave at the last minute,” she said, quoted by the French daily Les Echos in an article devoted to Chinese tourism published last Thursday.
In order to offer the possibility to travelers from around the world to enter and move more easily to China, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced in November 2023 a unilateral visa exemption policy for testing ordinary passport holders of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia. Since then, the experiment has experienced several widening phases.
Visa’s exemption already displays encouraging results. According to data published by the National Immigration Administration, foreigners made 38.05 million admissions and exit on the border of China in the first half of the year 2025, an annual increase of 30.2%. Entrances without visa continued to increase significantly, with 13.64 million foreigners entering China without visa in the first six months of the year. This figure represents 71.2% of the total of foreigners’ entries, an increase of 53.9% in annual sliding.
“This (the visa exemption) really helps people to travel, because it is so complicated to ask for a visa and to follow the procedure,” noted Giorgi Shavadze, a Georgian living in Austria, quoted by Associated Press (AP) during a recent visit to the Sky Temple in Beijing.
According to Echos article written by Raphaël Balenieri, corresponding to Shanghai, “China also wants foreign tourists to experience technological and industrial progress made by the country in recent years”. “In Shanghai, visitors are impressed by the cleanliness of the sidewalks, the omnipresence of electric cars …”, he observed.
The observation of this correspondent coincides with the testimonies of foreign tourists in China.
Viktor Acar, a 23 -year -old French student, went to China for the first time in April 2025. For him, his trip was “exotic”. During an interview with Xinhua, he said that “in a good sense of the word, it is the fact of completely changing a frame and being immersed in a very different, but quite captivating environment”. What surprised it the most is the calm atmosphere in the heart of major Chinese cities compared to major cities in Europe. It mainly attributes this to electric vehicles and the width of the streets.
For Alexandre Guilbaud, 28, a doctoral student at the University of Caen, digital modernity in China is fascinating. He told Xinhua that “the experience of using Alipay was very interesting. I found this payment system really very practical”. According to him, daily life in the country is extremely fluid, “no need for liquid, everything works by QR code”.
For Viktor as for Alexander, China goes far beyond their expectations, both practically and culturally. Both expressed their desire to return. “I will gladly come back, even to work here,” said Alexandre.
