American Chamber of Commerce-China 2012 White Paper on Visa Policy

AmCham China has just published its 2012 White Paper. Here’s a brief introduction to the chapter on visa policy, which I co-authored:

Both the US and China face major visa policy challenges as well as opportunities. For the US, the challenge is that over the past decade, the US market share of spending by international travelers fell from 17 percent to 11 percent of the global market. A burdensome US visa system and lack of visa processing capacity drive millions of potential travelers to other countries at an enormous cost to the US economy. These barriers put the US at a great disadvantage when it comes to competing in the international travel market.

Chinese demand for US visas is “exploding,” according to a 2010 State Department report. With 52 million outbound travelers in 2010, China has surpassed Italy, Japan, France, and the United Kingdom to become the third largest spender on international tourism, after Germany and the US. The China National Tourism Administration estimates there will be 100 million outbound travelers by 2015. Prioritizing inbound Chinese travel can help the US recapture its historic share of the international tourism market while boosting tourism revenues and creating jobs. The average Chinese visitor to the US spends more than US $6,000 (RMB 38,100) per trip. At that rate, every additional 23 Chinese visitors create one US job.

In January 2012, US President Barack Obama took an important and welcome step towards boosting the tourism market by issuing an executive order setting goals for increasing visa processing capacity and reducing visa processing times in China. Below we set forth AmCham China’s concrete recommendations for how President Obama’s goals can be achieved, by increasing the number of consular officers, opening additional visa-issuing posts, decreasing security check times, improving appointment scheduling, and improving the Chinese version of the application form.