China’s State Council on Monday issued a document on measures to expand consumption of services and promote the development of cultural and tourism industries, which will optimize tourism entry policies and expand the scope of countries with visa-free access.
The State Council pointed out in the document that it encourages all regions to introduce preferential measures such as cultural and tourism consumption vouchers and price reductions for consumption of a certain amount of money, as well as to introduce special tourism products such as snow tourism or summer tourism, and to increase the number of tourist trains.
In addition, it also encourages localities to appropriately liberalize restrictions on the number of tickets that can be sold for large-scale performances, and no longer conduct repeated content audits for touring performances.
The document mentioned that the state will optimize its inbound tourism policy and make use of the existing visa-free transit policy and regional visa-free entry policy to launch a national tourism image campaign named “Hello China!”, and will optimize the departure tax refund service and promote the immediate purchase and refund (tax refund for goods) measure.
Consumer demand in mainland China has been declining in recent years, with the CPI (Consumer Price Index) rising by only 0.2% in 2024. In order to improve the weak consumption situation, China has launched various stimulus packages, including the electronic product subsidy scheme, under which consumers can receive a 15% subsidy of up to RMB 500 on the purchase price of digital products such as cell phones, tablets, PCs and smart watches with a unit price of no more than RMB 6,000.
Written by Inside Asian Gaming
