Door opens to regional travel
China’s visa-free pacts with ASEAN countries boost tourism, people exchanges
For millions of people across the Asia-Pacific region, traveling in and out of China is becoming easier than ever before. University associate professor Sivakumar Kumaresan is hoping to return to Shangri-La in southwestern Yunnan province now that China has granted visa-free access to Malaysian travelers. The 50-something Malaysian visited the city in 2017 and described it as “one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to”.
Now that he does not have to go through the hassle of applying for a visa, Sivakumar is also keen to go to Beijing to visit his extended family. Like many citizens of the multicultural Southeast Asian nation, Sivakumar is of mixed race, the son of an ethnic Chinese mother and an ethnic Indian father.
Sivakumar is just one of the growing number of Malaysians who are planning to go to China after authorities announced last November that Malaysian tourists will be allowed to enter the country for up to 15 days without a visa. Uzaidi Udanis, chairman of the Malaysia Inbound Tourism Alliance, said travel agents have seen “a lot of movement from Malaysia to China” since December.
Since Dec 1, Malaysia has extended visa-free access to travelers from China with the policy to be in place until the end of 2024. Uzaidi expects it will lead to an influx of Chinese tourists, noting that a growing number of Chinese businesspeople are going to Malaysia on weekends just to play golf.
He said the visa-free policy will not only benefit the travel and tourism industry but the national economy as well, as it will encourage more businesspeople to invest in Malaysia. “Tourism is a big door for us to (encourage more) people-to-people connection,” Uzaidi told China Daily.
It is this “big door” that Malaysia and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) wanted to open when they started allowing Chinese travelers visa-free entry.
Apart from Malaysia, Singapore on Jan 25 signed a visa-exemption agreement with China. The agreement commenced on Feb 9 in time for the Chinese New Year holiday.
Thailand and China on Jan 28 signed off on mutual visa exemptions starting on March 1. Indonesia is planning to extend visa-free access to tourists from 20 countries, including China.
The moves are already paying off. Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam were among the top 10 most popular destinations for outbound travel during the Lunar New Year holiday, according to data from Chinese online travel platform Trip. com.
The eight-day holiday that began on Feb 10 also marks the country’s first travel rush of the year, with the National Immigration Administration saying that more than 13.5 million inbound and outbound passenger trips were recorded during the holiday season.
“As China implements a visa-free policy for a larger circle of friends, the country sees its inbound and outbound travels soar, with more Chinese tourists going abroad and more foreign travelers visiting China,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning on Feb 19.
“The Spring Festival became the peak time of global tourism,” said Mao at a daily news conference.
Thailand welcomed nearly 880,000 foreign visitors between Feb 5 and Feb 11, according to the Thai Ministry of Tourism and Sports. China ranked top for foreign tourists during the Spring Festival with nearly 200,000 visitors — an increase of 38 percent compared with the previous week.
According to local media, Chinese tourists spend at least 20,000 yuan ($2,780) per person on average during trips to Thailand. This revenue has contributed to businesses at various levels.
Malaysia saw a total of more than 100,000 Chinese tourists during the Lunar New Year holiday — a 50 percent increase compared to the same period last year, according to Sin Chew Daily.
Local tour operators estimated that these tourists spent between 1 billion ($208.59 million) and 1.5 billion ringgit in the country.
Though it is not an official holiday in Cambodia, the Chinese Lunar
New Year is broadly celebrated in the kingdom and more than 1 million domestic and foreign tourists visited Cambodia during the Spring Festival celebrations, according to Cambodia’s Ministry of Tourism.
Cambodian Ministry of Tourism Secretary of State and Spokesperson Top Sopheak said he believed that the number of Chinese visitors during the festival was on the rise as there were many bookings of flights and tour guides from Chinese holidaymakers.
“The introduction of the visa-free policy, coupled with promotion on social media, holds significant importance as it is expected to attract a larger pool of potential Chinese tourists, igniting their interest and willingness to explore these four nations,” Puvaneswaran Kunasekaran, a senior social and development sciences lecturer at the Universiti Putra Malaysia, told China Daily.
Maybank Investment Bank said visa waivers for Chinese travelers would increase tourist arrivals in Malaysia and Singapore, noting that the city-state is popular with Chinese tourists due to its cultural familiarity, strong safety record, and “close people ties”. Ethnic Chinese account for over 70 percent of Singapore’s 5.6 million people.
Kuala Lumpur-based Maybank sees a slightly slower recovery in the tourism industries of Vietnam and Indonesia, nothing that neither country has yet granted visa waivers for Chinese tourists.
The Chinese market has long been the biggest source of tourists for ASEAN countries — as the region is not only geographically close but has strong cultural and economic ties with China. In the first half of 2023, China was the largest source of non-ASEAN visitors to the region, accounting for 8.2 percent of the 46.5 million arrivals, according to the latest data from the ASEAN Secretariat.
The visa-free policy will not only boost Chinese arrivals in ASEAN but also help increase Chinese investment in the region, experts said.
Norman Bin Muhamad, Malaysia’s ambassador to China, told China Daily that his country is aiming to attract 5 million Chinese tourist arrivals every year through the new visa-free policy. Before the pandemic, over 3 million Chinese tourists visited Malaysia in 2019.
According to Ibrahim Suffian, cofounder and director of programs at the Merdeka Center for Opinion Research, the Malaysian government is pursuing more business investment from China. He said visa-free travel will encourage greater communication between Chinese and Malaysian businesspeople.
“China is Malaysia’s biggest trading partner so there’s already a great deal of travel between the residents of these two countries,” Ibrahim told China Daily.
He said the mutual visa-free travel policy will not only strengthen trade relations but also people-to-people exchanges between China and Malaysia.
Both the Chinese and Thai governments are optimistic that the mutual visa-exemption policy will encourage more people-to-people exchanges.
“All those policies are an incentive to the travel industry from both of the countries. Outbound tourism in China has recovered gradually since last year,” said Guan Jian, spokesman of GZL International Travel Service, adding that Southeast Asia is still a popular choice with Chinese tourists.
Guangzhou-based GZL, a major travel agency in southern Guangdong province, was one of the first travel agencies to organize group tours to Thailand after China announced the resumption of outbound group tour services at the beginning of last year. The tours had been suspended for three years due to the pandemic.
Guan said the number of visitors to Thailand grew steadily last year, although the rate of recovery is still below expectations owing to some tourists’ personal safety concerns.
While Guan is confident that the visa-free policy will encourage more Chinese tourists to come to Thailand, he also issued a note of caution. “Thailand is facing more competitors as many countries have also offered or are ready to offer visa-free policy to Chinese tourists,” he said.
On the other hand, he is very optimistic about the potential of China’s inbound tourism under the mutual visa-exemption policy. In 2023, GZL’s branch in Hainan province served more than 10,000 foreign tourists under visa-free policies from about 70 countries, he said.
“China is a large country, the visa exemption will definitely stimulate the growth of inbound tourism. Travelers can have various options and experience the diversity of China in many more places and each route will be unique and impressive,” Guan said.
In Indonesia, I Putu Winastra, chairman of the Bali chapter of the Association of Indonesian Tour and Travel Agencies, said the visa-free policy will encourage more tourists to stay longer and spend more. He added that this will encourage a greater number of tourists to visit other places in Indonesia aside from popular hot spots like the resort island of Bali.