As an important symbol of promoting high-level opening-up, China has continued to optimize its visa policies, simplify and facilitate visa procedures, and promote unilateral visa exemption or mutual visa exemption with other countries. Recently, China's series of visa policy "combinations" have attracted the attention of the world, which has played a great role in promoting economic and trade cooperation, tourism and other fields, and is also an important embodiment of the expansion of China's visa-free "circle of friends", demonstrating China's determination to promote high-level opening-up and high-quality development.
Optimizing the visa policy will help promote people-to-people exchanges and economic and trade investment. China has actively adjusted its visa policy for foreigners to China, continuously optimized the visa processing experience, simplified visa procedures for applicants, temporarily exempted eligible applicants from taking fingerprints, and greatly reduced the content of application forms, so as to facilitate people from all over the world to come to China. With the introduction of a series of optimization policies, the degree of connectivity between China and other countries and regions has been further improved, and the process of foreigners coming to China has become more convenient and cheaper. With the more frequent personnel exchanges between China and foreign countries, the types of factors related to the economy will also be actively improved. On the one hand, the mobility of factors of production such as commodities, capital, and labor has been continuously enhanced. The scale of orders between China and the world will continue to expand, and China's high-quality goods will be sold to the world and the global specialty goods will flow into the Chinese market in both directions. On the other hand, the mechanism and system of economic cooperation have been improved. With the increasingly close economic and trade exchanges between people, China has gradually promoted the construction of many economic and trade cooperation platforms such as the CIFTIS, the "Belt and Road" Forum, and the International Import Expo, improved the new system of open economy, and deepened the reform of the system and mechanism in the field of investment. It can be seen that the optimization of visa policies to promote people-to-people exchanges and economic and trade investment between China and other countries in the world will have a positive impact on building a domestic and international dual circulation pattern, promoting win-win cooperation and economic globalization.
The optimization of visa policies has led to the recovery and development of the global tourism industry. At present, with the gradual recovery of production and life order and global factor circulation, the tourism industry, which has been under the dual pressure of the global new crown epidemic and economic downturn, needs to recover quickly. A number of measures to optimize the visa policy have provided more convenience for the exchange of people between China and foreign countries, which is of great significance to the recovery of tourism in China and many places in the world. On the one hand, China's local tourism industry can take advantage of policy advantages such as optimized visas and unilateral visa exemption to attract a large number of overseas tourists to China for sightseeing. At the recent Madrid International Travel Exhibition and Berlin International Green Week, China's cultural landscape and tourism products have attracted great attention from exhibitors and visitors from all regions. With the increase in the number of overseas tourists coming to China, the improvement of local tourism will also lead to the improvement of transportation, medical care, shopping and other related infrastructure, and promote the post-epidemic economic recovery and development. On the other hand, with the favorable optimization of visa policies, a large number of Chinese tourists have "reversed the Chinese New Year", which has led to the development of global tourism. While China is promoting the implementation of unilateral visa-free policies, many countries have also responded by introducing corresponding visa facilitation policies. Thailand implements a 5-month visa exemption for Chinese tourists; Singapore officially implemented visa exemption with China on February 9; Malaysia allows Chinese nationals to stay in Malaysia without a visa for up to 30 days. These visa facilitation policies have greatly lowered the threshold for outbound travel, making overseas travel a "walk-and-go" trip. During this year's Spring Festival, South Korea's Jeju Island reception business vehicles are all booked, Bali, Phuket, Sabah and other islands need to be booked two months in advance, and the spring Francisco-Italian-German-Austrian tour groups are basically sold out. It can be seen that China's multiple visa optimizations will further promote the further heating up of China's inbound and outbound tourism market, and drive the diversification and expansion of the tourism industry in neighboring countries and other parts of the world, thereby promoting the stabilization and recovery of the world economy.
The trial implementation of the unilateral visa-free policy signifies that China continues to promote high-level opening-up in an all-round way, optimizes the visa policy, facilitates the flow of people and economic and trade factors, and drives the recovery and development of tourism in China and many regions of the world while developing its own economy, demonstrating China's determination to promote high-level opening-up and demonstrating its sincerity in continuously expanding opening-up. (The authors are professors at the School of International Relations at Beijing University of Foreign Chinese and students at the School of International Relations at Beijing University of International Chinese).
*: International Business Daily Author: Song Wei Liang Zhihan.