China’s passport will soon start to gain more power, if the country’s authorities continue reaching visa-free travel deals with the current rhythm, experts believe.
Following a spike up in China’s efforts to open the doors to more foreigners to enter visa-free for tourism purposes, Besart Bajrami, founder of VisaGuide.World, asserts that soon the country will see its passport moving up in the Passport Power Index.
These deals, though often with countries that do not perform well in the Passport Index, will help China gain a foot, and rise slowly for at least a few positions up.
At the beginning of January 2024, China announced it had reached a permanent visa-free agreement with Thailand, which became effective later in March. Previously in September 2023, the authorities in both countries had approved a regime that permitted visa-free travel for their nationals to each other’s territory, which was temporary, and scheduled to expire at the end of February this year.
Later on February 9, China and Singapore removed visas for the citizens of each other, for stays up to 30 days.
The Chinese passport is only the world’s 118th best passport to have, as of May 2024, out of a list of 199 world passports ranked by the VisaGuide Passport Index.
According to this index, Chinese passport holders are eligible to travel completely visa-free to a total of only 48 world countries, while they need to apply for a traditional visa beforehand for visiting as many as 117 countries – including here the 30 Schengen Area countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, etc.
They can, however, travel with simplified version of a visa, an electronic visa, to 25 countries, and with a visa on arrival to another 25. Entry with only an electronic travel authorization is allowed for nationals of China only by one country.
While many Asian passports rank worse than China’s, the first position in the VisaGuide Passport Index is occupied by Singapore, the nationals of which can visit 159 countries completely visa-free, and they need a traditional visa only for 19 countries.
The second-best Asian passport to have in May 2024 is that of Japan, listed 14th, followed by South Korea (31st), Malaysia (45th), and Hong Kong (46th).
In 2019, before the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, China had welcomed 97.7 million foreign visitors. Even after it removed all COVID-related entry restrictions at the end of 2022, the country did not manage to come even close to those numbers last year. In 2023, 35.5 million travelers visited China, which is less than 40 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.
In a bid to revive tourism, the country has offered visa-free entry to numerous nations, even though it does not hope to gain visa-free access to their home countries any time soon, including here numerous European countries.
The country has extended visa-free entry for 12 European countries – Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland – until the end of 2025.
