{"id":37817,"date":"2023-05-08T09:37:39","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T09:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/after-opening-borders-china\/"},"modified":"2023-05-08T09:39:36","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T09:39:36","slug":"after-opening-borders-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/after-opening-borders-china\/","title":{"rendered":"After opening borders, China presses Singapore for visa-free travel deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Xinghui Kok and Chen Lin<\/p>\n

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China is hammering out details with Singapore on a bilateral visa-free travel arrangement, according to Beijing’s embassy, a move that could boost arrivals in the city-state from what was its biggest pre-pandemic tourism market. <\/p>\n

There were 3.6 million Chinese visitors to Singapore in 2019, more than any other country, who spent a combined S$4.1 billion ($3.09 billion). <\/p>\n

Many Chinese have in recent years been keen to invest, move assets or relocate to Singapore, with some buying into luxury real estate.<\/p>\n

Among Singapore’s 4 million citizens and permanent residents, three-quarters are of Chinese ethnicity and many speak Mandarin, making it easy for mainland Chinese to navigate the country. <\/p>\n

“It is something that citizens of both countries are eagerly awaiting, and is also a shared concern for the leaders of both countries,” a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Singapore said.<\/p>\n

Singapore’s foreign ministry did not respond to Reuters request for comment. <\/p>\n

Chinese travellers at present are required to apply for visas to visit Singapore.<\/p>\n

Singaporeans were allowed 15-day visa-free visits prior to the pandemic. That arrangement has yet to be reinstated, which has led to lengthy queues, some overnight, at the Chinese visa application centre in Singapore. <\/p>\n

The Chinese ambassador to Singapore Sun Haiyan wrote in a Facebook post last month: “Hope that the competent authorities of the two sides can achieve positive results as soon as possible.”<\/p>\n

($1 = 1.3273 Singapore dollars)<\/p>\n

\n

(Editing by Martin Petty, Kanupriya Kapoor)<\/p>\n

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By Xinghui Kok and Chen Lin SINGAPORE (Reuters) – China is hammering out details with Singapore on a bilateral visa-free travel arrangement, according to Beijing’s embassy, a move that could boost arrivals in the city-state from what was its biggest pre-pandemic tourism market. There were 3.6 million Chinese visitors to Singapore in 2019, more than […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":37818,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1222],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-world-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportWorldNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ4709D-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37817"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37820,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37817\/revisions\/37820"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}