The Indian government will restart issuing tourist visas to citizens of China from July 24, marking the first such move in five years. The announcement came via a statement from the Indian Embassy in Beijing on Wednesday.
Tourist visa services had been halted in 2020 when India suspended all such visas as part of its pandemic containment strategy. With this new policy, Chinese nationals must complete an online application, secure an appointment, and personally submit their passport and other documents at Indian Visa Application Centers located in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.
The embassy noted that any requests to retrieve passports from the Beijing center must include a formal withdrawal letter.
Air travel and visa access between India and China had been severely restricted in recent years due to the Covid-19 crisis and growing political tensions. The diplomatic freeze intensified after the 2020 Galwan Valley conflict, which brought bilateral relations to their lowest point since the 1962 war.
While Beijing gradually resumed issuing visas for Indian students and businesspersons, general travel remained under suspension. However, following a series of disengagement talks between the two militaries, both sides pulled back troops from multiple friction points along the Line of Actual Control in eastern Ladakh.
In October last year, both countries reached an agreement for troop disengagement at Depsang and Demchok. Soon after, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping met in Kazan and committed to improving bilateral engagement.
This year, the two nations have explored ways to revive their relationship, including plans to boost people-to-people contacts. These steps include restarting direct flight operations and resuming the Kailash Manasarovar Yatra, a religious pilgrimage that has remained suspended since the pandemic began.
In April, India’s External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar remarked that relations between the two Asian powers were progressing positively, while emphasising the need for continued dialogue to achieve full normalisation.