At the regular policy briefing held by the State Council Information Office on November 22, 2024, the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that visa facilitation measures will continue to be introduced to create more conveniences for the exchanges of Chinese and foreign business personnel.
According to the introduction, in the past year, China has signed visa exemption agreements with six countries including Singapore, Thailand, and Kazakhstan. Currently, it has achieved full visa exemptions with 25 countries.
A new version of the Chinese visa application form has been launched, with 34% of the items optimized and simplified, and the form-filling time has been greatly shortened. Chinese embassies and consulates abroad have completely abolished the visa appointment system, further expanded the scope of fingerprint exemption, making the visa procedures for foreigners coming to China more and more convenient.
Since this year, China has also reached arrangements with countries such as Brazil and Australia for the mutual issuance of ten-year multiple-entry visas and five-year multiple-entry visas, and has issued five-year multiple-entry visas for personnel from Central and Eastern European countries. Meanwhile, China has actively participated in the APEC Business Travel Card Scheme to facilitate the exchanges of Chinese and foreign business personnel in the Asia-Pacific region.
Tong Xuejun, the person in charge of the Consular Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that in the next step, more conveniences will be created for the exchanges of Chinese and foreign personnel, especially business personnel, to serve high-quality development and high-level opening up to the outside world.