Visa Update: Extra Visa Requirements Dropped?

thebeijinger — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:30:46 +0800

With the “Olympic Period” now officially over, things in the capital are slowly starting to return to normal. Traffic is stalled on the second ring road, people are once again forgoing any semblance of a social life choosing instead to return to the warm embrace of badly dubbed bootleg DVDs and of sleepless nights in front of episode after episode of their favorite American TV series and more jianbing sellers, bike repairmen and slops collectors are starting to appear on the streets. Although the Olympics has left us with more bilingual signs, greater wheelchair access and some great new subway lines, doubts remain over whether the visa situation will return to it’s pre-games state. We contacted Nadine Ulrich, who maintains the super useful FXZL site, earlier today and asked her what recent reports about a loosening of restrictions for getting L visas might mean for other categories of visa. We’ve included her response below:

China Visa – Facts and Fiction

thebeijinger — Fri, 23 May 2008 14:30:24 +0800

Update: Comments on this post have now been closed - we encourage readers who'd like to continue to discuss visa queries to head to either this section of the Beijinger forum or to Nadine's page devoted to visa issues - which can be found here - http://fxzl.blogspot.com

"We have made some arrangements according to usual international practice. That is, in the approval process we are more strict and more serious with the procedure"

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang

Beijing saw a marked drop in the number of overseas tourists in April, which fell by 5.3 percent year-on-year, according to official statistics revealed on Tuesday. Yu Xiuqin, the bureau's spokeswoman attributed the decrease partly to Beijing's tightened business visa approvals on foreign visitors for international exhibitions and conferences, because of safety concerns for the coming Olympic Games.

China Daily: Beijing sees marked drop in overseas tourists in April

An enormous amount of confusion currently exists throughout Beijing's expat community in regard to the Chinese government's apparent, but not officially announced, recent tightening of visa policies. The lack of an adequate response from government departments and spokespeople to the increasing demand for clarification of the gap between the existing regulations and commonly observed practices, has only added to the frustration felt by both business people and those hoping to travel to China during the Olympic period. As applications are being handled on a case-by-case basis, it’s almost impossible to make absolute and irrefutable statements about what’s going on, still, patterns have begun to emerge and below I outline what is known and what can be suspected to be the case in regard to the new visa situation.

What we know for sure:

The Beijinger Blog - Nadine Ulrich

Visa Update: Extra Visa Requirements Dropped?

China Visa – Facts and Fiction