China’s National Immigration Administration (NIA) forecasts that average daily cross-border flows during the 15–23 February Spring-Festival holiday will reach 2.05 million, 14.1 percent higher than last year. The projection appears in a Xinhua “Headlines” feature published late on 19 February that chronicles how foreign tourists are embracing a “very Chinese time” of temple fairs, duty-free shopping and QR-code-based mobile payments.
Behind the colour-piece lies hard mobility policy. Expanded visa-free entry—now covering 48 unilateral and 29 mutual-exemption countries—combined with 240-hour transit waivers at 65 ports, has turbo-charged inbound demand. Flight bookings by foreigners surged 400 percent year on year in the fortnight before the holiday, according to Fliggy.
The NIA data confirm that China’s strategy of layering facilitation (e-visa platforms, faster e-channel enrolment, multilingual payment apps) on top of broader visa waivers is working. In 2025, 30.08 million of the 82 million foreign arrivals entered visa-free, a 49.5 percent jump on 2024. Retailers are already feeling the impact: overseas traveller tax-refund transactions grew 95 percent in value last year, and duty-free operators in Hainan report double-digit conversion rates among Russian, Saudi and U.S. tourists.
![Spring-Festival boom pushes inbound travel to 2 million passengers a day, says National Immigration Administration]()
Travel planners needing an authoritative reference for these evolving exemptions can lean on VisaHQ. The global online visa service maintains an up-to-the-minute China entry guide (https://www.visahq.com/china/) and supports corporate mobility teams with eligibility checks, documentation reviews and contingency visa applications, streamlining compliance at a critical time.
For employers this means reassessing China travel budgets. Airline seat availability is tightening on Europe- and Southeast-Asia-China routes, and hotel ADRs in Tier-1 cities have spiked 15 percent since early February. Mobility managers should also note that foreigners can now link 40 overseas e-wallets to Alipay’s international version, giving expatriates and short-term assignees practical alternatives to cash in a market where card acceptance is still patchy.
Compliance teams, meanwhile, must ensure travellers use the correct visa-free category: the 30-day waiver for tourism and business does not replace the need for a work-authorisation stamp if any productive activity is involved. Misclassification triggers fines of up to RMB 10,000 and potential re-entry bans.
Behind the colour-piece lies hard mobility policy. Expanded visa-free entry—now covering 48 unilateral and 29 mutual-exemption countries—combined with 240-hour transit waivers at 65 ports, has turbo-charged inbound demand. Flight bookings by foreigners surged 400 percent year on year in the fortnight before the holiday, according to Fliggy.
The NIA data confirm that China’s strategy of layering facilitation (e-visa platforms, faster e-channel enrolment, multilingual payment apps) on top of broader visa waivers is working. In 2025, 30.08 million of the 82 million foreign arrivals entered visa-free, a 49.5 percent jump on 2024. Retailers are already feeling the impact: overseas traveller tax-refund transactions grew 95 percent in value last year, and duty-free operators in Hainan report double-digit conversion rates among Russian, Saudi and U.S. tourists.
Travel planners needing an authoritative reference for these evolving exemptions can lean on VisaHQ. The global online visa service maintains an up-to-the-minute China entry guide (https://www.visahq.com/china/) and supports corporate mobility teams with eligibility checks, documentation reviews and contingency visa applications, streamlining compliance at a critical time.
For employers this means reassessing China travel budgets. Airline seat availability is tightening on Europe- and Southeast-Asia-China routes, and hotel ADRs in Tier-1 cities have spiked 15 percent since early February. Mobility managers should also note that foreigners can now link 40 overseas e-wallets to Alipay’s international version, giving expatriates and short-term assignees practical alternatives to cash in a market where card acceptance is still patchy.
Compliance teams, meanwhile, must ensure travellers use the correct visa-free category: the 30-day waiver for tourism and business does not replace the need for a work-authorisation stamp if any productive activity is involved. Misclassification triggers fines of up to RMB 10,000 and potential re-entry bans.
