Streamlined services for overseas visitors unveiled

China's cyberspace regulator and 10 other departments have rolled out new guidance to make app-driven daily lives easier for foreign visitors and people from outside the Chinese mainland, thus addressing persistent challenges in mobile payments, telecom sign-ups and transportation as Beijing seeks to deepen high-standard opening-up.

The "Implementation Guidelines on Improving the Convenience of Digital Services for Inbound Overseas Visitors", posted on the website of the Cyberspace Administration of China on Thursday, outlines a two-phase road map to modernize the visitor experience.

The initiative, which is part of a broader push for "high-standard opening-up", sets a 2027 target to remove most "bottlenecks" in telecommunications, payments, tourism and public transportation, with the ultimate goal of achieving a world-leading level of inbound digital services, where local systems are seamlessly integrated with common international practices.

For veteran travelers like Denis Simon, a longtime China-based academic administrator who served as executive vice-chancellor of Duke Kunshan University in China from 2015 to 2020, the obstacles were not about a lack of technology, but about systems built around domestic assumptions.

"I just wanted to buy a train ticket," Simon recalled of a frustrating attempt to buy a high-speed rail ticket using the official 12306 app for a trip from Beijing to Shanghai.

Simon, now a nonresident fellow at the Washington, DC-based Quincy Institute, said he had traveled to China more than 150 times since 1981. He found that he could browse schedules but could not complete purchases after being prompted for "real-name verification" using a foreign passport.

"The system worked, but only if you already knew where the digital system broke," Simon told China Daily, adding that his eventual success required standing in a manual line to get an old-fashioned paper ticket.

The new guidance explicitly targets that kind of breakdown by urging improvements in foundational digital services and the "internationalization" of user experience.

In transportation, the initiative will promote international standards by encouraging urban rail systems to accept international bank cards for tickets. Transportation apps will also need to offer multilingual services and digital tools to help visitors navigate cross-city journeys.

To address immediate connectivity issues, the policy requires telecom providers to simplify their online service portals for foreigners.

Specifically, the plan proposes setting up physical service outlets at major airports and ports of call with high international traffic to enable travelers to manage mobile and data needs upon arrival.

In the realm of finance, the policy seeks to align China's domestic payment landscape with global habits.

It encourages supporting more overseas electronic wallets for domestic use and expanding "deposit-free" policies on digital platforms.

Simon said he encountered the flip side of China's near-seamless mobile payments culture in Shanghai. He had linked Alipay to a foreign Mastercard and made a small test payment. But at a cafe, his payment attempt froze and the app demanded SMS verification sent to a Chinese phone number, which he did not have available at the time. With no alternate method offered, he paid with cash.

"The problem wasn't hostility," Simon said. "It was assumption. The system assumed I lived there."

This is exactly the kind of impediment the new policy claims to address — decoupling mobile payments from domestic phone numbers and recognizing short-term visitors as legitimate users, not anomalies, he said.

The digital transformation extends to lodging and tourism, and the guidelines also promote the construction of digital international medical platforms that cooperate with major international insurance companies to facilitate secure health record sharing.

While pushing for greater openness, the document emphasizes data security and privacy.

The guidance calls for stronger protection of critical information infrastructure and improved security standards in high-frequency scenarios such as cross-border payments and online reservations, while emphasizing stronger data governance and personal information protection to prevent misuse or leaks of sensitive data.

Elyn MacInnis, a cultural expert who spent 30 years working and living in China, said the "first bottleneck" for international travelers actually arises before they even set foot in the country.

The Rhode Island resident said that many travelers are unaware that mobile applications like WeChat are the primary means of payment throughout China.

Once on the ground, the struggle for connectivity becomes a costly and isolating experience, as international roaming plans through providers like AT&T can cost between $10 and $12 a day.

"These changes will make it much easier for people from other countries to visit China and to be happy and not to have to waste a lot of time or not to have to suffer trying to figure out how to do something," Mac-Innis said of the new guidelines.

In response to reporters' questions, a Cyberspace Administration of China official said that smoother digital payments and tourism services could unlock more spending by inbound visitors, lift sectors such as travel and lodging and add momentum to the digital economy.

The guideline is also expected to provide important support for attracting foreign investment, expanding domestic demand and promoting growth, thus injecting new momentum into high-quality development, the official said.

huanxinzhao@chinadailyusa.com