India Fully Restores Tourist Visas for Chinese Nationals After Five Years
Chinese citizens can now apply for Indian tourist visas worldwide.
India has fully restored tourist visa access for Chinese nationals across all its embassies and consulates worldwide, effectively ending the last major restriction on civilian movement between the two countries five years after the 2020 Galwan Valley clash plunged bilateral relations to their lowest point in decades.
Implemented without fanfare earlier this week, the decision allows Chinese travellers to submit tourist visa applications at any Indian diplomatic mission globally, significantly expanding the partial resumption introduced in July 2025 that had been limited to the embassy in Beijing and consulates in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong.
Diplomatic sources described the move as a carefully calibrated component of a broader series of reciprocal confidence-building measures agreed upon in recent months. These include the resumption of direct passenger flights in October 2025 after a five-year suspension, preparations for the 2026 Kailash Mansarovar Yatra, streamlined procedures for business, medical, and journalistic visas, and joint cultural events marking the 75th anniversary of diplomatic ties.
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The visa liberalisation is a direct outcome of the October 2024 disengagement and de-escalation agreement along the Line of Actual Control, followed by the landmark meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan. That summit produced clear directives to revive multiple stalled bilateral mechanisms, a process accelerated through subsequent meetings of foreign ministers, defence ministers, national security advisers, and the Special Representatives on the boundary issue.
With these steps now complete, India and China are demonstrating a deliberate shift from confrontation to pragmatic coexistence, prioritising people-to-people exchanges and economic cooperation while maintaining structured dialogue on the unresolved border question and other strategic concerns. The full reopening of tourist visas is expected to pave the way for a substantial increase in Chinese visitor arrivals in 2026, further consolidating the ongoing normalisation of Asia’s most consequential bilateral relationship.
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