Shanghai Street View: Variant Visas
When does one dud plus one dud equal success? The answer to that question is usually “never”, but our city doesn’t seems unaware of that fact as it gets set to roll out a new short-stay visa waiver program that looks remarkably similar to another 3-year-old one that failed to attract much interest.
The new program will allow visitors from 51 countries to enter China visa-free for up to 6 days starting over the weekend, or double the limit of up to 3 days under the previous pilot program. The original program suffered from a number of problems, and there’s every indication that this new expanded edition won’t see much improvement.
The goal of such programs is to attract more big-spending tourists, especially in the current climate where such spending could help to offset slowdowns in other areas of China’s economy.
As someone who has lived in China on and off for the last 30 years and travels quite a bit, I can say with authority that the gold standard for any country trying to attract visitors is a true visa waiver program like the ones most westerners enjoy in other western countries and southeast Asian destinations like Singapore, Thailand and Malaysia. The waiver for visits of up to a month is a huge attraction, since planning trips to any of those countries simply requires buying an air ticket and perhaps booking a hotel.
But apparently China won’t be offering any such visas just yet, and instead is trying this piecemeal approach being piloted under the latest program in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Nanjing. The scheme is relatively simple, offering visa-free stays for up to 144 hours, or 6 days. Most western countries are covered in the plan, and so are some developing ones like Russia.
The idea sounds good on the surface, since 6 days is certainly enough time to see most of Shanghai and perhaps one or two other nearby cities like Suzhou or Hangzhou. The latest plan even allows visitors to arrive by plane, ship or train, even though I’m unaware of rail links between any foreign country and the 3 cities in the new program.
Boosters of the plan point out that it’s twice as long as the earlier pilot program rolled out in 2013, which allowed visa-free entry for visitors on trips of up to 72 hours, or 3 days. That plan failed to gain much traction, partly due to its short duration and possibly also because visitors weren’t supposed to leave the city where they entered.
Destined for Failure
But I really doubt this new plan will do much better for a number of reasons. Perhaps most importantly, this kind of short-term visa-free policy is unique to China, or at least I’ve never heard of any other countries that allow visa-free stays only for such short durations. Accordingly, few foreigners will feel comfortable with such a scheme, since the concept will be equally alien to most of them.
The somewhat random number of 6 days will also probably confuse many people who might potentially use the program, since they might wonder why it’s not a full week, which seems like a more natural number. Such confused people would probably just decide to skip the program altogether and get a proper visa if they really wanted to visit China, rather than risk misunderstanding the time limits and potentially incurring big penalties and headaches at the airport.
Another problem is the usual Chinese bureaucracy, which requires anyone using the program to prove they have a ticket to leave China within the 6 day limit. Obviously anyone who was only planning such a short stay would probably have such a ticket, but in an era of e-tickets many people may not carry paper versions of such tickets. In the end, the requirement would also probably cause many would-be tourists to worry about potential violations and just go for a normal visa.
All that said, I do have to at least commend Shanghai for taking the latest steps toward making China a more visa-friendly place for tourists. Today’s system is far from perfect, but it’s still a vast improvement from what I remember during my early trips to China in the 1980s. That system included lengthy forms not only for visas, but also required everyone to declare all their valuables like cameras, computers and jewelry upon entering and leaving China.
Nowadays much of that paperwork is gone and getting Chinese tourist visas is relatively easy, even if it’s a tad inconvenient. I’m always a bit envious of my friends from Singapore, as they are one of the very few places whose citizens can enter China visa-free for tourism visits longer than a week. This latest program seems like China’s way of gradually extending that privilege to most other westerners, and I’m cautiously optimistic that this could be the final step before China rolls out a true tourism visa waiver program on par with the rest of the world.
