French people are exempt from visas for China until the end of 2025

More Chinese tourists in France and more French tourists in China. This is what could also emerge from President Xi Jiping’s recent visit to France.

On the one hand, Chinese people wishing to come to France and Europe would see their applications accelerated in terms of obtaining a visa, and on the other hand, French citizens would still be exempt from visas, but this time until the end of next year.

For the Chinese

For Chinese tourists, the time needed to obtain a visa would therefore go from the current month and a half to a few days, thanks above all to the opening of around fifteen new visa application centers in Chinese.
Similarly, the procedures for groups already formed would also be facilitated for those who turn to some “recognized” travel agencies. Finally, from 2025 all Chinese will arrive regularly France for businesses they could benefit from particular formalities aimed at facilitating their visits.

More generally, it should be known that the Chinese are among the tourists who spend the most on travel and that their number in France is still far from having returned to pre-Covid levels, when there were around two million travelers to France every year .

For the French people

So far the measure was only supposed to last until the 30th November 2024. But it will be extended well beyond, until the end of 2025 and the French plus citizens of 11 other countries (including Belgium, Switzerland and Luxembourg) will continue to be visa-free to travel to China.

This applies to both tourists and business travelers from these countries, provided they spend no more than 15 days to 14 nights there. On top of that, the visa is again mandatory.
For the first quarter of 2024, an estimated 74,000 French visitors entered China with this visa exemption out of just over 100,000 who visited the country in the same period.

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