Singapore, China to set up mutual 30-day visa-free travel, enhancing ‘people-to-people exchanges’

TIANJIN, China: Singapore and China on Thursday (Dec 7) announced that they will establish a 30-day mutual visa exemption agreement between both countries, amid a post-pandemic improvement in flight connectivity.

The proposal was announced during the 19th Joint Council for Bilateral Cooperation (JCBC) meeting – the highest-level annual bilateral forum between both countries – held at the Hilton Tianjin Eco-City hotel with a range of agreements set to be signed.

This is the first JCBC meeting to be co-chaired by Singapore’s Deputy Prime Minister Lawrence Wong and Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang.

At the start of the meeting, Mr Ding noted how the number of Chinese students studying in Singapore has exceeded 40,000, basically recovering to pre-pandemic levels.

He added that the visa-free arrangement would “provide greater convenience for people-to-people exchanges”.

Mr Wong said Singapore hopes to even go beyond pre-pandemic levels in terms of direct flight connectivity.

“This will be supported also by a mutual 30-day visa-free arrangement between our two countries, which will enable more people-to-people exchanges, thereby fortifying the bedrock of our bilateral relations,” he added.

More details on the visa-free travel regime, including when it will come into effect and how it will be implemented, have not been revealed yet.

Chinese citizens currently require a visa to enter Singapore.

Singaporeans holding ordinary passports can enter China without a visa for 15 days if they are travelling for business, sightseeing, visiting relatives and friends, and in transit.

China resumed this arrangement in July, more than three years after it was suspended because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This came on the heels of an upgrade in Singapore-China relations to an “All-Round High-Quality Future-Oriented Partnership”, after Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing in March during an official visit.

The JCBC reviews the substantive collaboration between Singapore and China and charts the direction of cooperation.

Mr Wong, who is on a four-day official visit to Beijing and Tianjin, said during a bilateral meeting on Wednesday that he was looking forward to signing more than 20 memoranda of understanding and agreements at the JCBC meeting.