Japanese travelers have been grappling recently with a problem: the absence of visa-free travel to China. Before COVID-19, Japanese did not need a visa to enter China, but Beijing suspended that privilege in March 2020 amid the pandemic, and it has yet to be reinstated. China has recently begun allowing Europeans and South Koreans to visit without a visa, and so some in Japan are now calling for visa-free travel to be promptly reinstated for Japanese too.
Why hasn’t this happened? The reason is that China has attached a new condition for reinstating visa-free travel for Japanese, one that Tokyo has baulked at accepting. What China seeks is the principle of reciprocity, meaning that Japan should likewise allow visa-free travel for Chinese. In fact, South Korea does not have a visa exemption for Chinese nationals, and most European countries to which China has granted visa-free travel do not accept Chinese nationals without visas. Thus, China is imposing the condition on Japan alone. How might we interpret this?
The fact that many countries require that Chinese travelers obtain visas is the source of considerable public criticism within China. Not surprisingly, then, the Chinese government is keen to increase the number of countries that allow visa-free travel. At the same time, though, it is expanding visa-free travel to China to stimulate inbound tourism to help in its struggles to recover economically from the pandemic. In November 2024, Slovakia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, and South Korea were all granted visa-free travel to China. However, these are all “one-way visa waivers” – Chinese people wanting to travel to these countries will need a visa for entry. Conversely, there are a few countries that only allow visa-free travel for Chinese nationals. These are countries like Uzbekistan, Iran, and Micronesia, as well as limited areas like Jeju Island in South Korea. Meanwhile, the number of countries with reciprocal visa-free travel arrangements with China has been expanding in recent years, to now include Albania (2023), Dominica (2022), Kazakhstan (2023), Maldives (2022), Malaysia (2023), Thailand (2024), and Singapore (2024).
As noted, Japanese visa-free travel to China was allowed prior to the pandemic. However, since China is demanding a reciprocal arrangement and Japan refuses to accept this, a return to the days when Japanese could visit China without a visa does not seem to be on the horizon. Yet none of the so-called developed Western countries allows entirely reciprocal visa-free travel, so why has Japan been singled out?
If we consider the Chinese perspective, we can perhaps identify the following reasons. First, the Chinese side might be gauging that Japan, which has its own economic travails and faces a severe labor shortage, has a strong desire to attract Chinese tourists and workers for short- and long-term stays. However, it is unlikely that a drop in the number of Chinese visitors will force Japan to acquiesce to China’s demand, given that Japan is receiving large numbers of tourists and workers from other regions. Indeed, the murder and attempted murder of Japanese children in Shenzhen and Suzhou in 2024 have had a tremendous impact on Japanese society, so it is unlikely that the public will agree to waiving visas for Chinese nationals.
Moreover, the Chinese side is approaching this visa issue with Japan by applying a negotiation tactic of making things more difficult for themselves and making unreasonable demands of the other party in the hope of obtaining some kind of concession or compromise. This is unlikely to produce results. As with the Fukushima food controversy, the Japanese public are likely to increasingly feel that Japan is being singled out. This Japanese public reaction could ultimately force a compromise.
Third, China may have other specific objectives. For example, since South Korea allows visa-free travel for Chinese nationals only to Jeju Island, it is possible that Beijing will ask Okinawa Prefecture to adopt a similar system. It is well known that the Chinese government has been increasingly interested in Okinawa in recent years. If a visa proposal were to be seen as somehow assisting in a Chinese infiltration of Okinawa under the guise of “solving” the issue, it would be very likely to provoke the Japanese and strengthen domestic opposition.
A Japan-China summit meeting is scheduled to be held on the sidelines of the upcoming APEC meeting in Peru. How will the visa issue be discussed there? As with the Fukushima food controversy, the question is whether the Chinese side is proactive in seeking a compromise that all sides can accept.