In recent years, China's inbound tourism market has shown a booming trend, and many places have welcomed a wave of tourists. In 2024, Shanghai received 6.7059 million inbound tourists, a year-on-year increase of 84%, among which South Korea, the United States and Japan became Shanghai's top three inbound source countries. In the first two months of 2025, Shanghai received 946,300 inbound tourists, a year-on-year increase of 34.2%, and 699,900 foreign tourists, a year-on-year increase of 43.9%. In addition, Beijing also performed strongly. From January to April 2025, Beijing received a total of 1.46 million inbound tourists, a year-on-year increase of 57.1%, and realized tourism spending of US$1.9 billion, a year-on-year increase of 55.0%.
This growth trend is due to China's continued optimization of its entry policies. As of December 17, 2024, China has reached comprehensive visa-free agreements with 26 countries, unilaterally exempted 38 countries, implemented transit visa-free agreements with 54 countries, and concluded mutual visa-free agreements with 157 countries and regions. Starting from June 9, 2025, China will pilot a visa-free policy for ordinary passport holders from Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, and Bahrain. So far, the number of countries that apply the unilateral visa-free policy to China has expanded to 47.
Various places are also actively improving tourism convenience and service quality. Shanghai promotes the application of the "single window" platform at cruise ports to improve customs clearance efficiency, and pilots the launch of the "foreigner entry card" self-service printing terminal at airport hubs to simplify the entry process. Beijing has issued the "Beijing Special Action Plan for Optimizing Inbound Tourism Services", launching 22 measures around products, publicity, services and guarantees to improve inbound tourism services.
As the inbound tourism market continues to heat up, China is gradually becoming a popular destination for global tourists. In the future, China will continue to make good use of the visa-free policy and the port group tourist visa policy for foreigners, develop a more diversified combination of inbound tourism channels, upgrade facilitation measures such as customs clearance, communications, payment, ticket purchase, duty-free and tax refund, and launch more high-quality inbound tourism routes.