More than 5 million passengers made border crossings through Shenzhen Bao’an International Airport this year as of 12 pm Wednesday, marking a year-on-year growth of 106.5 percent, thanks to the optimization of China’s visa-free policy.
Daily passenger flow broke the record five times since the start of the year, with the highest daily tally hitting 20,300.
The surge in passenger numbers comes after China introduced a raft of policies to facilitate foreigners travel. The country has further expanded the scope of visa-free countries and optimized its visa-free policies this year.
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In the latest move, nine more countries — Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Malta, Estonia, Latvia and Japan — were added to its visa-free list, allowing citizens from those countries to stay for up to 30 days for business, tourism and other reasons starting from Nov 30.
So far, citizens from 38 countries are entitled to travel to China visa-free.
According to Shenzhen airport, the number of inbound foreigners reached nearly 500,000 this year, growing 122.2 percent from a year earlier.
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More than half the visitors were traveling for tourism, family visits, and exchange programs, with travelers from Malaysia, South Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and Singapore making up the largest groups.
Over 180,000 foreigners passed through the airport visa-free this year, more than six times the number in the same period last year.
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In the third quarter of 2024, the number of foreigners who entered China reached 8.186 million, up 48.8 percent year-on-year. Among them, 4.885 million entered China visa-free, a year-on-year increase of 78.6 percent.
With Xinhua inputs
