What: China's visa-free program, now covering 50 countries, drove a record 68 million international visitors in 2025 and is projected to make China a top-five global tourism destination and source market by the early 2030s.

Why it is important: China's dual rise as both a source and destination market represents a major structural shift for global retail, but the Korea/Japan cases above show that rising arrivals do not automatically translate into higher retail sales.

In the first six months of 2026, China received 22.91 million visits from foreign nationals, up 20.4% year on year, with 77.7% of these arrivals entering under China's visa-free policy. The scheme now spans 50 countries — 35 in Europe, seven in Asia, six in the Americas, and two in Oceania — after February 2026 additions for Canada and the UK. VisitBritain forecasts Chinese visitor spending in the UK to reach £1.2 billion in 2026, expanding 20% annually through 2030.

China recorded 697 million inbound and outbound crossings in 2025, up 14.2% year on year, with international visitor crossings up 26.4% and over 73% benefiting from the visa-free scheme. According to UN Tourism, China regained its position as the top global spender on international tourism in 2023, at $196.5 billion. The World Travel & Tourism Council recorded 68 million international visitors entering China in 2025 (+15.5%), with visitor spending up 10.5% to $135 billion — both far outpacing global averages.

Looking ahead, China's middle class could add over 60 million internationally mobile households by 2033 — just 2.3% of its population — while Beijing's 15th Five-Year Plan targets 190 million annual inbound tourists and $150 billion in inbound spending by 2030.

IADS Notes: Chinese outbound travel has proven highly volatile for Asian retail over the past year, a pattern this article's visa-free push may help stabilise or could equally amplify. Retailers across the region have had to move fast to capture Chinese arrivals, as seen when South Korean department stores and convenience chains expanded promotions and experiential concepts ahead of visa-free group entry (Inside Retail, September 2025), yet even then, higher footfall did not reliably translate into higher spending. That fragility became more visible when Chinese arrivals swung sharply away from Japan toward Thailand over Lunar New Year, cutting deeply into duty-free and luxury sales in Japan while Thai retailers capitalised on the shift (South China Morning Post, February 2026). The exposure this creates was underscored shortly after, when a boycott by Chinese tourists drove significant losses for Japanese department stores and duty-free operators, forcing a reassessment of over-reliance on this single source market (Financial Times, March 2026). China's expanding visa-free program and growing outbound middle class thus represent both a substantial retail opportunity and a source of concentration risk that destination markets will need to manage carefully.

China's tourism industry gains momentum thanks to visa-free policies