Now that China has lifted blockades on foreign travel, the post-zero-Covid itch to travel is back in full swing and the demand for visas is booming. This is especially noticeable in Shanghai, where authorities claim the city has never seen this many people applying for a passport and travel documents.
According to the Shanghai Public Security Bureau Exit-Entry Management Bureau (上海市公安局出入境管理局), the city of Shanghai is currently seeing a record high in Chinese citizens leaving the country. Within a month, from January 9 to February 8, the local authorities received more than 380,000 exit/entry documents.
The Chinese Spring Festival Holiday took place from Jan 21-27 of 2023, which was the first time since the Covid outbreak that many people could finally fly abroad.
The topic went trending on Chinese social media on February 15, when it became a number one topic on Weibo’s hot-search list as “Shanghai People Are Lining Up to Leave the Country” (#上海人正在排队出国#), receiving over 240 million views.
Although the topic received a lot of attention, it also received some criticism since the headline “People in Shanghai Are Lining Up to Leave the Country” gives readers the idea that the topic is about people leaving the country to emigrate, when it is actually just about people literally leaving the country and crossing the border for, among others, international tourism and business travel purposes.
Earlier this month, Daily Economic News (每日经济新闻) reported that various embassies and consulates are seeing long queues. Those in Shanghai who now want to make a visa appointment for the U.S., for example, will see that there are no free slots available until late July of this year. Besides visa applications for the U.S., vasas for France and Japan are also in great demand.
Chinese citizens traveling to other countries first need to obtain visas or other required entry permits from the destination countries if needed, and they are allowed to exit China after their exit/entry documents, including passport and travel documents, have been examined and approved by border inspection authorities.
The current boom in international travel is directly connected to the pandemic and the fact that international travel was difficult and sometimes even impossible for Chinese travelers. “We’ve been held back for three years, we wanna get out and play,” one commenter wrote.
Shanghai is the number one city when it comes to people now traveling abroad. The number two city is Beijing, then other cities follow, namely: Guangzhou, Xiamen, Chengdu, Nanjing, Qingdao, Tianjin, and Shenzhen.
There are also many expressing some envy about the fact that so many people have the money, time, and opportunity to travel abroad: “I really want to go, but the reinstated number of international flights in Beijing is still limited, and the ticket price is too high.”
Others plan to travel later this year: “I haven’t traveled for three years. I’ll wait for my children’s summer holiday and then we’ll fly straight away!”
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