If you sell China trips, you are constantly asked for evidence: how big is the market, how fast is it growing, who is coming and where do they go. This page answers that with official figures only — arrivals, the visa-free share, the top ten source markets, city rankings, inbound spending, tax refunds and the full-year forecast. Every number carries the period it covers, the date it was released and a link to its public source, so you can quote it in a proposal without wondering whether it is still true.
Drawn from the most recent official releases. Where two windows overlap — for example January to June and January to August — the longer window is the more current one.
An important measurement caveat, because it changes how you read every figure on this page: immigration statistics count entries or trips, not distinct individual travellers. A business traveller crossing the border four times appears four times. Tourism-authority figures count visits. Neither is wrong; they answer different questions, and mixing them in one comparison produces a false contradiction.
Here is the 2025 example, since it is the year most often quoted. The National Immigration Administration counted 82.04 million foreign-national entries; the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, in its annual statistical bulletin, counted 35.17 million foreign tourist visits (up 30.6%), within 154.5 million total inbound visits including Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents. Both are official. Both are correct. If you have seen "35 million foreigners came to China" and "82 million foreigners came to China" in the same week and assumed one must be wrong, neither is — but only one of them belongs in your proposal, and it is the one matching the question being asked.
Knowing the release calendar matters more than knowing any single number, because it tells you when to refresh a proposal and when a slide has gone stale.
| Release | Period covered | Foreign-national entries | Visa-free share | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 Sep 2026 | January–August 2026 | 61.29 million +19.5% |
23.72 million 77.6% (+26.8%) |
The most current official window, released at the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum in Lianyungang. Use this one in proposals. |
| 10 Jul 2026 | January–June 2026 | 22.91 million +20.4% |
17.82 million 77.7% (+30.6%) |
Total cross-border flow hit 369 million trips, a record for a first half. This is the window most city and provincial data is published against, so it is the one to align with when quoting Shanghai, Beijing or Chengdu. |
| 31 Mar 2026 | 2025 full year | 82.04 million +26.4% |
30.08 million 73.1% (+49.5%) |
Your year-on-year base. Total cross-border flow was 697 million trips in 2025, itself a record, which makes the 2026 growth rate a comparison against an already-elevated baseline. |
| 20 Aug 2026 | Visa policy change | Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam added to the 240-hour transit visa-free scheme | Policy changes do not arrive on a quarterly schedule. Two more countries gained access on this date, which is why any visa-free count you quote needs its "as of" date attached. | |
Sources: National Immigration Administration (released via the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum, 10 September 2026) — Chinese-language release and China Daily report; National Immigration Administration 2025 full-year figures — nia.gov.cn.
The top ten list is the single most useful table on this page for anyone deciding which language to write in and which currency to quote in.
| Rank | Source country | Region | What it means for how you sell |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Korea | North-east Asia | Short-haul, high-frequency, weekend-capable. Korean-language social content and strong Seoul flight capacity matter more than English here. |
| 2 | Russia | Eurasia | Visa-free to 2027 under the mutual arrangement. Also the dominant slice of European booking volume — a 53.5% share, growing 553%. |
| 3 | Malaysia | South-east Asia | Chinese-language affinity plus substantial non-Chinese-speaking population — one market, two content tracks. |
| 4 | Vietnam | South-east Asia | Added to the 240-hour transit scheme on 20 August 2026; overland border trade and leisure travel overlap heavily. |
| 5 | Thailand | South-east Asia | Mutual visa exemption. Mature outbound market with high repeat rates. |
| 6 | Singapore | South-east Asia | Highest-value South-east Asian market. 30-day mutual visa exemption, English-first, WhatsApp-first. See our Singapore guide. |
| 7 | United States | North America | The only Western market in the top ten — and not on the unilateral visa-free list. Its presence here is despite the extra friction, which is why it converts so well when you do reach it. |
| 8 | Japan | North-east Asia | Visa-free under the mutual arrangement. Independent-travel heavy, short booking window. |
| 9 | Mongolia | North-east Asia | Land-border driven, concentrated in northern China itineraries. |
| 10 | Australia | Oceania | English-speaking, long-haul, high per-trip spend. Included in the unilateral visa-free list. |
Top ten source countries for foreign arrivals, first half of 2026, together accounting for 62% of the total. Source: National Immigration Administration, via CRI. European booking growth of 275% and Russia's 53.5% share / 553% growth: China Tourism Association H1 2026 Tourism Market Insight Report, via Guangming Daily.
Eight of the ten markets are in Asia. That is not an accident of marketing — it is geography, flight capacity and visa symmetry doing most of the work. If your product is a 12-day China itinerary sold in English, you are competing for the seventh slot on that list, inside a market that needs a visa route most of the others do not.
Which is exactly why the seventh slot is worth having. US travellers are already in the top ten despite having to work around the transit rules — meaning the demand is strong enough to survive real friction. Your job is not to create demand in the United States. It is to be the version of China that a US traveller can find in English, before they have committed to a routing.
For years inbound China meant Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an and Guilin. The 2026 data shows a different pattern, and it has a direct consequence for how you package and film.
| City | Inbound visitors, H1 2026 | Year on year | What is attracting them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shanghai | 5.315 million | +27.8% | The Bund and Lujiazui as the postcard, but the South Bund tailoring market — 280-plus workshops, a bespoke suit at under a third of overseas prices, collectable as fast as next-day — is now rated the city's second attraction on foreign travel sites |
| Beijing | 3.273 million | +32.6% | Depth replacing checklist tourism: cycling the central axis, cloisonné workshops, themed postmarks. In July alone, more than 600,000 foreign entries through the two airports, up 31% |
| Chongqing | 1.448 million | +56.8% | The fastest-growing major city on the list, and the strongest signal that the western China narrative sells |
| Chengdu | 1.315 million | +33.6% | Pandas remain the hook, but the actual behaviour has moved on — night cruises, teahouses, tailoring, wet markets. Foreign arrivals at the airport reached 570,000 by 31 July, up 37.9% |
City figures are for inbound tourist visits in the first half of 2026, as compiled in the China Tourism Association H1 2026 Tourism Market Insight Report (Guangming Daily). Note that city-level inbound visitor counts use a tourism definition and are not directly comparable with the immigration "entries" figures in section 2.
Only two of the twenty — Xi'an and Guilin-adjacent classics aside — would have appeared on an equivalent list a decade ago in this order. Guangzhou and Shenzhen rank third and fourth but their figures include Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents, so they are not comparable with the four cities in the table above.
Foreign tourists' footprints now cover close to 500 Chinese cities, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism data centre. Emerging-city growth rates and the Shenzhen figures are as reported in Jinwan Evening News and Guangming Daily respectively.
Four separate schemes operate in parallel and they are frequently confused with each other. If you only read one table when quoting a client, read this one.
| Scheme | Countries | Stay permitted | What it covers |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unilateral visa-free | 50 | Up to 30 days | Sightseeing, business meetings, visits to relatives and exchanges. All but two countries are covered to 31 December 2026; Russia runs to 31 December 2027 and Brunei is open-ended. |
| Mutual visa exemption | 29 | Varies by agreement | Full reciprocity, so the terms differ by country. Singapore, Japan, Thailand and others sit here rather than in the unilateral list. |
| 240-hour transit visa-free | 57 | Up to 10 days | Requires a confirmed onward ticket to a third country or region, and travel within the permitted areas. Available at 65 open ports across 24 provincial-level regions. |
| Hainan 30-day entry | 61 | Up to 30 days | Island-only, for tourism and business, without a nationwide visa. |
Figures as published by the National Immigration Administration, September 2026, including the addition of Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam to the 240-hour transit scheme on 20 August 2026. Note that count varies by source: some outlets report 55 transit-eligible countries against the administration's 57, and some report 50 unilateral-visa-free countries where other official releases say 48 plus Russia plus Brunei. Always attach an "as of" date. For the full country-by-country list, see our China visa-free 2026 guide, which we update whenever the list changes.
This is the most commonly misread figure in the entire dataset, and it costs operators money. US passport holders cannot enter China visa-free for 30 days. They can use 240-hour visa-free transit when routing through eligible ports towards a third country or region with a confirmed onward ticket, which is how the United States still ended up as the seventh-largest source market.
Practical consequence: a US-targeted campaign must sell a routing, not just a destination. Worth checking before you write the creative, and worth answering honestly if a prospect asks — see the FAQ for the exact wording we use.
Traffic growth is a small number of people crossing a lot of times. Spending growth is what changes a client's unit economics — and in 2026 the second number is growing faster than the first.
| Indicator | Figure | Change | Period |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travel services exports | RMB 263.6 billion | +27.7% | Jan–Jul 2026 |
| Overseas visitors claiming departure tax refunds | — | +366% | H1 2026 |
| Refunded goods value and refund amount | — | +69% | H1 2026 |
| Shanghai refund claims verified by customs | 253,000 claims on RMB 2.3 billion of goods | claims ≈3× value +58% | H1 2026 |
| Alipay inbound spending | — | transactions +59.2% value +72.9% | From 1 Jul 2026 |
| WeChat Pay inbound transactions | daily average | +55% | From Jul 2026 |
| Alipay refund users | — | users +350% value +358% | From Jun 2026 |
| "Buy and refund on the spot" scheme, nationwide | 8,000+ refund stores | claims +12.96× store count +100% | First year |
Sources: China Economic Net, departure tax refund and inbound payment data; CCTV, travel services exports. The "buy and refund on the spot" scheme launched nationwide in April 2025, cutting the minimum purchase threshold to RMB 200 and compressing the processing time.
Three reference points for planning a proposal that has to survive being checked.
| Reference point | Inbound visits | Foreign-national arrivals | Inbound spending |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 — actual tourism-authority definition | 154.5 million inbound visits +17.1% | 35.17 million foreign tourist visits +30.6% | ≈USD 131 billion |
| 2025 — actual immigration definition | 697 million border crossings +14.2% | 82.04 million foreign entries +26.4% | — |
| 2026 — forecast | 163 million inbound visits (+8.0%) | 36.66 million foreign arrivals (+10.0%) | RMB 263.6bn travel services exports in the first seven months alone |
| 2030 — target | 190 million | — | Over USD 150 billion a year |
2025 tourism-definition actuals (154.5 million inbound visits, of which 35.17 million foreign tourist visits, up 30.6%, and 119.32 million visits by residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan): Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2025 Statistical Bulletin on Culture and Tourism Development, published 2 June 2026 — mct.gov.cn. 2025 immigration-definition actuals and the 2026 forecast (163 million inbound visits, +8.0%; 36.66 million foreign-national arrivals, +10.0%): China Tourism Academy, China Tourism Economy Blue Book No.18, published 31 March 2026 — Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The 2030 targets come from the national tourism development plan.
One honest footnote. The 2026 forecast of 36.66 million foreign arrivals was published on 31 March 2026, before the statistical bulletin of 2 June 2026 confirmed 35.17 million foreign tourist visits for 2025. Measured against that confirmed figure, the implied growth is closer to 4% than the stated 10%, which suggests the forecast was built on an earlier 2025 estimate. This is not a reason to distrust either number — it is a reason to say which base you are quoting. Never add the 163 million inbound-visit forecast and the 36.66 million foreign-arrival forecast together: they are the same people counted two different ways.
A statistics page is only worth the decisions it changes. These are the four we take from the numbers above, and the four we would suggest you take before the next quarterly release lands.
The top ten tells you which languages to write in. Eight of the ten are Asian, so a single English site is a deliberate choice to compete for a minority of the volume — a defensible one if the US, Australia and Singapore markets carry your margin, but it should be a choice. Rank your markets by value per trip, not by volume, and build content for the top three.
Inbound data lands roughly quarterly, city data arrives against the half-year window, and visa changes arrive whenever they are announced. Put those dates in your content calendar. A post published within 48 hours of an official release reliably outperforms the same post a month later, because it becomes the version other people quote — and quoting is what earns the links.
If you sell to US travellers, the single most common early objection is "can I even get in". Answering it accurately — transit visa-free, with a routing, plus a link to the current list — converts a sceptic faster than any destination footage. Get this wrong in either direction and you lose the lead: over-promising creates a refund, under-selling leaves the enquiry dead. Our visa-free guide is written to be sent directly to a prospect.
Forty billion views were generated by people showing ordinary life, and more than 60% of visitors say culture is their main reason to come. Your footage of a wet market, a train, a cashless breakfast and a village banquet is worth more than your drone shot of a mountain. Our 30-idea content library is built entirely around that shift, with shot lists.
This page exists because we needed it ourselves: to brief clients, to justify budgets and to answer "is the China market actually growing" without guesswork. Two things follow from it that you can take right now.
One 30-minute call, and you will leave with a plan built on the numbers above rather than on instinct:
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The demand is being manufactured in English, on video
For a page about statistics, this is the section that most directly determines whether any of the numbers above are reachable by you.
National campaigns, trade shows, travel-agent fam trips and magazine features — expensive, periodic and increasingly unconvincing to a traveller who can watch a stranger's unedited day in Chengdu on their phone.
40 billion views arrived without anyone buying them. What a traveller now trusts is a real person's real footage of an ordinary day. If that footage exists for your destination and your itinerary, and it is in the language your buyer reads, you are inside the demand. If it does not, you are not — and no amount of visa-free expansion closes that gap for you.
Chinamaxxing view count, the 28-billion "China travel" play count and the roughly-500-city footprint: Jinwan Evening News, Shaanxi Daily. Main purpose of visit and the "Becoming Chinese" framing: China Tourism Academy and Ctrip H1 2026 Inbound Tourism Report, via Guangming Daily.