{"id":69053,"date":"2025-01-22T11:01:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T02:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/22\/china-visa-free-entry-travel-eligible-countries"},"modified":"2025-01-22T11:01:47","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T02:01:47","slug":"chinas-economic-need-and-soft-diplomacy-spur-about-face-on-visa-free-entry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=69053","title":{"rendered":"China\u2019s economic need and soft diplomacy spur about-face on visa-free entry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It was once a privilege afforded to only Singapore, Brunei and Japan but now travel rules have been relaxed for dozens of countries. But are many people coming?<\/p>\n<p>A few years ago, getting a visa to visit China was a \u201cball ache\u201d, says Kate Murray. The Australian was going for a four-day trade show, but the visa required a formal invitation from the organisers and what felt like \u201ca thousand forms\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey wanted so many details about your life and personal life,\u201d she tells the Guardian. \u201cThe paperwork was bonkers.\u201d<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/jan\/22\/china-visa-free-entry-travel-eligible-countries\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It was once a privilege afforded to only Singapore, Brunei and Japan but now travel rules have been relaxed for dozens of countries. But are many people coming?A few years ago, getting a visa to visit China was a \u201cball ache\u201d, says Kate Murray. The Aust&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1643,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,43,50,70,93,47,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-australia-news","category-china","category-malaysia","category-thailand","category-us-news","category-xi-jinping"],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1643"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69053"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69054,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69053\/revisions\/69054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}