In a move billed as a “game-changer” for post-pandemic travel between Asia’s two largest markets, the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi announced on December 8 that it will roll out a nationwide Online Visa Application System on 22 December 2025. The platform—accessible via visaforchina.cn—will let Indian citizens complete electronic forms, upload supporting documents and book appointments before appearing at the visa centre only for biometric capture and passport submission.
The launch restores a digital pathway that had been suspended since the June 2020 Galwan Valley clashes, when China halted tourist and most business visas for Indian nationals. India resumed issuing tourist visas to Chinese citizens in November 2025; Beijing’s new portal is widely seen as a reciprocal confidence-building measure designed to normalise people-to-people links.
![Chinese Embassy to Launch Full Online Visa Application System in India on 22 December]()
Operational details released by Ambassador Xu Feihong include extended customer-service hours at the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre in Delhi and a dedicated hotline (+91-99990 36735) for technical support. Processing times and fee schedules remain unchanged for now, but the embassy hinted at “future service upgrades,” fuelling speculation that fast-track or multiple-entry options could follow.
For corporates, the digital interface promises greater transparency, fewer paperwork errors and the ability to submit bulk applications for project teams—critical benefits as bilateral trade rebounds and airlines add frequencies on the Delhi–Beijing and Mumbai–Shanghai routes. Mobility teams should update internal SOPs to integrate the new workflow, ensure staff have high-resolution PDF scans of required documents, and schedule early-morning upload slots to avoid server congestion when the portal goes live.
Strategically, China’s decision signals that it is keen to compete with Japan, South Korea and Southeast-Asian neighbours for Indian outbound tourism and investment. If implementation is smooth, analysts expect visa-issuance volumes to climb back toward the pre-2020 annual average of 800,000 within two years, reinforcing China’s broader pivot to unilateral visa facilitations rolled out this year for 45 other jurisdictions.
The launch restores a digital pathway that had been suspended since the June 2020 Galwan Valley clashes, when China halted tourist and most business visas for Indian nationals. India resumed issuing tourist visas to Chinese citizens in November 2025; Beijing’s new portal is widely seen as a reciprocal confidence-building measure designed to normalise people-to-people links.
Operational details released by Ambassador Xu Feihong include extended customer-service hours at the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre in Delhi and a dedicated hotline (+91-99990 36735) for technical support. Processing times and fee schedules remain unchanged for now, but the embassy hinted at “future service upgrades,” fuelling speculation that fast-track or multiple-entry options could follow.
For corporates, the digital interface promises greater transparency, fewer paperwork errors and the ability to submit bulk applications for project teams—critical benefits as bilateral trade rebounds and airlines add frequencies on the Delhi–Beijing and Mumbai–Shanghai routes. Mobility teams should update internal SOPs to integrate the new workflow, ensure staff have high-resolution PDF scans of required documents, and schedule early-morning upload slots to avoid server congestion when the portal goes live.
Strategically, China’s decision signals that it is keen to compete with Japan, South Korea and Southeast-Asian neighbours for Indian outbound tourism and investment. If implementation is smooth, analysts expect visa-issuance volumes to climb back toward the pre-2020 annual average of 800,000 within two years, reinforcing China’s broader pivot to unilateral visa facilitations rolled out this year for 45 other jurisdictions.
