South Korea is the most recent addition to a growing list of countries that are relaxing visa requirements for Chinese visitors, the Guangzhou Daily reported on Monday.
Starting April 20, Chinese tourists can obtain a five-year, multiple entry visa to South Korea. Previously, Chinese visitors to South Korea could only get a one-year or three-year multiple-entry visa.
South Korea became the most-popular destination for Chinese tourists in 2014, with more than 6.1 million mainland tourists hitting South Korean soil to spend an average of about 14,250 yuan—or 2,300 USD—per visit, according to figures from China's National Tourism Administration.
Australia also announced plans to extend multi-entry visa terms for Chinese tourists from one year to three years.
The two nations are new additions to a list of countries that are relaxing visa policies towards Chinese travellers that includes the United States, Canada and Japan.
This January, Japan has lowered the economic status for Chinese people applying for three-year, multi-entry visas from "sufficient" economic capacity to "certain" economic capacity, and opened five-year, multi-entry visas to high-income Chinese tourists.
Last November, the U.S. extended the validity of its business and tourist visas to be valid for 10 years—up from the previous validity stipulation of one year. Student visas were also extended to five years.
Canada made a similar deal in March, extending the validity for the visas of Chinese nationals to 10 years.
The number of Chinese tourists travelled to the US in 2014 has risen by 21 percent year-on-year, based on statistics issued by the US Department of Commerce. As for Japan, the amount of Chinese visitors to the island-nation surged by 82 percent, reaching 2.2 million in 2014, according to ChinaIRN.com, an industrial research website in China.
