At Russian Arctic port city Murmansk, Chinese tourists are seen arriving on shuttle buses to the city center from all directions.
Li Zhun, a Chinese tour operator, told the Global Times there must be 1,000 to 2,000 Chinese tourists visiting the city each day.
"Every day, there are at least 40 tour groups from China visiting the city. Nearly 80 percent of the guests came from southern Chinese provinces such as Guangdong and Fujian, who have shown a strong enthusiasm to visit the snowy scenery in Russia. And, the spectacular aurora just keeps them captivated," Li said.
"Now I become so busy that I don't have time to eat and sleep. And I even think the city's tourism capacity is on the verge of being overwhelmed. It is totally unexpected," Li said.
Easier access
Russia moved to lower the entry requirement for tour groups from China in 2023, and in August, it began offering e-visas that further helped facilitate Chinese tourist arrivals.
The e-visa allows citizens from 55 countries to visit Russia for up to 16 days. Russian news agency Sputnik reported on December 14 that some 70,000 Chinese citizens applied for the e-visas in the first four months after the new visa policy came into force.
Chen Zhigang, director general of the Russian-Chinese Business Park in St. Petersburg, said that he received a large number of visiting Chinese delegations in 2023.
"We at the Russian-Chinese Business Park alone have received over 40 delegations, including entrepreneurs, government officials as well as those from the academic and cultural circles in China. Tour groups are coming from all across China, and the three northeastern Chinese provinces, in particular, sent a large number of business groups to explore commercial opportunities in Russia," Chen said.
However, Chen said the boost provided by the visa policy fell short of his expectation as it was introduced after the peak summer travel season.
Policy support, visa applications, air flights and logistics have all returned to pre-COVID levels or fared even better, making it easier to travel to Russia. Tourism infrastructure has also improved, industry experts said.
According to Chen, both Chinese and Russian tourism representatives firmly believe that 2024 will be "an unusually strong year for the Russian tourism market when a large number of Chinese visitors will arrive, and a crucial year that will bolster the strength of the Russian tourism industry before it returns to reach pre-COVID high levels."
Chen noted that the current rush of business tours to Russia bodes well for bilateral trade and the economic cooperation in 2024.
The rising momentum supporting tourism sector rebounding is expected to go through 2024, in which bilateral personnel exchanges in culture, trade and investment will strengthen, Song Kui, president of the Contemporary China-Russia Regional Economy Research Institute, told the Global Times on Monday.
In addition to Chinese tourists swarming to visit Russia, Song said that a growing number of Russian travelers are enjoying visiting China now, buying traditional Chinese medicines and sightseeing.
Amid the resumption of the international flights between tropical Sanya city in South China's Hainan Province and Moscow on Thursday, Song noted that Russian visitors are enthusiastic about enjoying the tropical island's warm climate.
Russian tourists love to come to Sanya to enjoy the sand, sea and sunshine. Prior to the pandemic in 2019, more than 300,000 Russian visitors would annually visit the popular tropic city, Chinanews.com reported.
Sustained momentum
And, in the past several years, bilateral trade just boomed. Trade volume between China and Russia surged 26.7 percent year-on-year in the first 11 months of 2023 to reach a record high of $218.18 billion.
The figure is a milestone for bilateral economic ties, as the two countries achieved their $200 billion trade goal ahead of schedule. In 2019, China and Russia set a goal of ramping up bilateral trade to $200 billion by 2024.
"For China-Russia trade, 2023 was not a year without headwinds. There have been issues in financial connectivity and currency settlement, and Chinese people could not easily visit Russia during much of the first six months of the year, yet through our earnest efforts, we can see that the bilateral trade has now surpassed $218 billion," Chen said, noting that the two economies were entering 2024 on an optimistic note.
Looking forward, experts said that the cooperation between the two countries will continue to expand across a wide range of fields, thanks to the increasing seamless cooperation between the two large economies.
Song noted the growth potential in areas such as infrastructure cooperation can be further unleashed. For instance, China could be a major participant to invest and help build Russia's infrastructure projects.
Cooperation in agriculture and food processing could be further explored and strengthened, as Russia has been an important supplier to China's grain market, Song said. With the development of the Russian Far East, Song said that, currently, more and more Chinese people are flying to Russia to help develop the largely barren region by setting up numerous agricultural industrial parks there.
China and Russia conduct normal economic and trade cooperation on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit. Such cooperation should not become the target of any intervention or restriction by a third party, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry told a press conference on December 26.
This article was originally published by the Global Times.