Xi’an to join China’s visa waiver scheme

The capital of Shaanxi province, which is home to the world famous Terracotta Warriors, will allow passengers transiting through Xi’an Xianyang International Airport to stay in the city for three days without obtaining a visa prior to arrival, as long as they have an onward ticket for a flight to a third destination, departing within 72 hours of their arrival.

The scheme is available to citizens of 45 countries, including the all EU member states, the US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brunei, Russia, Ukraine, Qatar and the UAE.

It will be useful to also note that while Modi was facing an American and European winter over the past decade, the governments of Asian nations were sowing seeds of cooperation with him. In the past decade, Modi has visited China and Japan, their officials have been visiting Gujarat, and these governments have encouraged state-supported investments in Gujarat. Of course there have been American investments also in Gujarat – but there has been no American political support for these private investments.

In fact another question lurking in the background is whether Modi’s foreign economic policy will have a soft-leaning towards Asia, as compared to the U.S.? The short space in this article does not allow a discussion on that, and is the subject of another article.

Xi’an becomes the ninth Chinese city to offer the service, following Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Kunming, Chongqing, Dalian and Shenyang.

Shaanxi province welcomed 285 million tourists in 2013, 797,000 of whom entered through Xianyang Airport. The new policy is expected to come into force in the next two months.