According to India's New Delhi Television and The Indian Express, on the local time of November 21, India has fully resumed issuing tourist visas to Chinese citizens, ending a five-year suspension of visa issuance since 2020.
According to sources, the Indian government issued relevant notices last week, requiring Indian embassies and consulates around the world to resume providing tourist visa services for Chinese citizens. The sources said that this move is part of a series of "people-oriented" measures agreed upon by both sides to stabilize relations.
This initiative to restore tourist visas is based on a series of related actions taken earlier this year. In January this year, China and India reached an agreement to resume direct passenger flights that had been suspended since early 2020. In June this year, the pilgrimage activities of Indian pilgrims to Mount Kailash and Lake Manasarovar in Tibet were also restarted.
Indian officials who are aware of the policy developments revealed that this decision to relax the visa rules was made based on an instruction issued in July this year to resume processing tourist visas for Chinese citizens. In July this year, India first resumed processing tourist visas for Chinese citizens, but at that time, only a few channels such as the Indian Embassy in China and the consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong were open.
The report pointed out that promoting people-to-people exchanges is an important component of the confidence-building measures between China and India. Expanding the restoration of the tourist visa policy to a global scale demonstrates that the two countries' confidence in the momentum of bilateral relations is increasingly growing, and it is an "important step" toward the normalization of Sino-Indian relations.
The report mentioned that on November 10, after the five-year interruption, the commercial direct flight between the two countries resumed, and the first Indian passengers flew from New Delhi to Shanghai. The Indian Consul General in Shanghai, Mathur, went to the airport to welcome the passengers of this flight. Mathur stated that the resumption of flights marks a new era of closer connectivity between India and China, and he encouraged India to strengthen its connections with China's eastern commercial centers.
This article is an exclusive article by the Observer, and it cannot be reprinted without permission.
Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7576094938643890694/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author. Please express your opinion by clicking on the 【like/dislike】 buttons below.