Speaking from the floor of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) on 4 March 2026, Wang Yu—chairman of Shanghai-based Spring Airlines and a CPPCC National Committee member—urged the government to make a decisive leap in its visa-free strategy. Wang contrasted China’s current policy, which unilaterally waives visas for 50 nations with a maximum 30-day stay, with the 60- to 90-day waivers offered by regional competitors such as Japan, South Korea and Thailand. Short stays, he argued, keep long-haul visitors from including multiple Chinese destinations on a single itinerary and deter corporations from positioning medium-term project teams in the mainland. He proposed three concrete changes: 1) add key markets in North America and wider Europe—including the United States, Germany, Italy and Spain—to the unilateral visa-free list; 2) extend the permitted stay to 45–60 days to encourage deeper travel itineraries and short-term assignments; and 3) expand the 240-hour transit-without-visa (TWOV) scheme to more land, rail and sea checkpoints to knit neighbouring supply-chain hubs more tightly to China’s interior. Wang also called for a global marketing push. Many foreign travellers, he said, still assume China’s borders remain hard to navigate three years after the pandemic. He recommended an “Inbound Tourism Content-Creator Support Program” that would subsidise influencers to showcase the ease of entering China under the new rules. Although CPPCC proposals are not binding, the remarks carry weight: Spring Airlines handles more than 20 percent of China’s low-cost international capacity. If adopted, Wang’s blueprint would be the most significant liberalisation of China’s short-stay regime since the post-pandemic reopening in 2024, and would directly benefit multinational firms that rotate staff in and out of the mainland on rapid cycles.
Source: Yicai Global
