China's visa-free push and social media blitz lure record tourist numbers

Claire Thum had never planned to visit China. The 28-year-old Singaporean knew little beyond the terracotta warriors until one day her social media feed began filling with images of minimalist villas tucked into misty forests, limestone peaks, and glittering city skylines. The content was relentless and beautiful. Eventually, curiosity won. She booked a trip to Shanghai, visited the viral perfumery To Summer with its signature garden, tried a snowboarding simulation, and shopped for winter clothes. Now she is planning a return visit, with Yunnan, Xinjiang, and Harbin on her list. Thum is one of millions of foreigners who have discovered China in the past two years, part of a tourism surge that has caught even Beijing by surprise.

For decades, China struggled to convert its size and cultural weight into sustained international tourism. The pandemic made things worse. But starting in 2023, the government began a deliberate campaign to reverse the decline. It introduced visa-free travel for citizens of 50 countries, relaxed entry requirements, and—crucially—launched a coordinated social media blitz on platforms banned inside China itself. The early results were modest. Memories of lockdowns lingered. Flight routes had not fully recovered. Then something shifted. In 2025, foreign arrivals reached 35 million, surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time and exceeding Thailand's numbers. By the first half of 2026, 18 million visitors had arrived from visa-free countries alone, pushing overall arrivals up 20 percent year-over-year. The momentum is real.

Several forces converged to make this happen. One was geopolitical. As American prestige declined under Donald Trump's presidency, favorable views of China reached record highs in multiple countries according to Pew Research Center. Simultaneously, a cultural trend called "Chinamaxxing" went viral in the West—the adoption of Chinese habits like drinking hot tea, skincare routines, and lifestyle choices. On TikTok and Instagram, content creators posted endlessly about Shanghai's nightlife, Chongqing's neon-soaked streets, and the everyday texture of Chinese urban life. The government amplified this. Officials in cities like Chongqing set up accounts on X and TikTok to promote themselves. Beijing allocated 2.64 million yuan to tourism offices. Shanghai committed 1.6 million yuan to advertising on Expedia and Booking.com. Chongqing's deputy director of tourism, Zhu Mao, explicitly stated his goal: to make the city "internet famous," leaning on influencers and even recruiting American basketball star Stephen Curry for promotional boosts.

The tourists who arrived were not interested only in museums. They wanted to experience contemporary China. They visited Huawei and DJI showrooms. They shopped at Pop Mart stores, which function like theme parks of collectible characters. They ate hot pot at Haidilao. They bought skincare products at Miniso, where foreign visitors sometimes account for 70 percent of foot traffic during peak hours. This spending has injected life into China's struggling retail sector, which has been hollowed out by weak domestic consumption and a collapsing real estate market. Miniso's flagship store on Shanghai's Nanjing East Road has seen such strong foreign traffic that the brand's overseas revenue now exceeds its mainland China sales, growing 20 percent annually. Joy Group, parent of the viral beauty brand Judydoll, generated over 600 million yuan in overseas retail sales in 2025 alone, with Judydoll achieving more than tenfold growth in two years, particularly in Vietnam and Japan.

Yet the recovery remains fragile and incomplete. China still generates less than one-third of the inbound tourism spending that the United States does, and per-capita spending by foreign visitors—around $2,240—lags far behind mature tourism economies. International tourism accounted for less than 0.5 percent of China's GDP in 2025, compared to 8 percent in Spain and Thailand. The country faces structural obstacles that no amount of social media marketing can easily fix. Major cities are almost entirely cashless, which creates genuine hardship for tourists without local bank accounts or digital payment wallets. Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp are inaccessible without a virtual private network, which is technically illegal. Language support remains sparse. Some entrepreneurs are trying to solve these problems—Kora, an AI-powered tourist guide, has served tens of thousands of visitors since launching in early 2026, simplifying ride-hailing and restaurant reservations through a chatbot interface. But these are band-aids on systemic issues.

The geopolitical tailwinds that have helped China's tourism boom may not last. Japanese visitor numbers have already declined following a diplomatic dispute between Beijing and Tokyo. The Iran war has temporarily boosted traffic through Chinese airports by making Middle Eastern routes more expensive and risky, but that advantage is temporary. If China wants the curiosity it has sparked to become habit, it will need to make the country genuinely easier to navigate for outsiders. The social media campaign has done its job—it has made China visible and desirable to millions of young travelers who had never considered visiting. Whether those travelers return, and whether they spend more money when they do, depends on whether China can solve the practical problems that still make it a difficult place to visit.