A Word of Welcome from the Consul General

Letters and Blogs

Updated: 2007-04-12 07:12
Chinese tourists

Your recent article entitled "Agency wants US to open up to Chinese tourists" gives the mistaken impression that United States policy is not to issue tourist visas to Chinese citizens. 

In fact, we want Chinese tourists to come to the United States and are eager to issue visas to all qualified Chinese tourist visa applicants.

In reality, rather than limit or prohibit tourism from China, the United States welcomes and encourages Chinese visitors. In fact, in 2006 the United States Embassy in Beijing and the Consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenyang and Chengdu issued Chinese citizens 268,000 visas good for tourist visits to the US.

Since almost all of these visas were one-year, multiple-entry visas, holders of these visas can travel to the United States as many times as they want for one year from the date the visa was issued. We also issued 83,000 visas to Chinese citizens in other categories.

The US Embassy and our Consulates in China welcome visa applications from Chinese tourists and tour groups as well as individual tourists.

Sadly, we receive relatively few applications from tour groups. We urge the Chinese government to make serious efforts to encourage tour groups to travel to the United States. Again, our officers welcome tour groups.

Michael Regan
Consul General, US Embassy, Beijing