Seems legit!

YES!

为进一步便利中外人员往来，决定自北京时间2023年3月15日零时起，就外国人来华签证及入境政策作如下 调整：

一、恢复2020年3月28日前签发且仍在有效期内的签证入境功能。

二、驻外签证机关恢复审发外国人各类赴华签证，具体要求详见办证须知。

三、口岸签证机关恢复审发符合法定事由的各类口岸签证。

四、恢复海南入境免签、上海邮轮免签，港澳地区外国人组团入境广东免签、东盟旅游团入境广西桂 林免签政策。

??????????????????????_?????????????????

Everyone book their flights now for the rest of the year! Ooof!

Waiting on my Asia Miles points to transfer, hopefully there are still flights left by Thursday lol. I expect a big run on flights.

The news is official. See this WeChat official account post from the Chinese Embassy in the US.

As much as I welcome this news, it won't be good for flight costs for the next few months.
It's going to be a bumpy ride, if not more flights can be added.

The high cost will likely still keep the 'usual' tourists from visiting, is my guess.

We need more flights.

Fares are insane on UA 857/858 etc.

Yeah, I am good only through May. No idea what I'll do after that....

I think China isn’t as attractive a destination as it was pre 2020 for either tourism or business.

I don’t expect this change to lead to a rush of people visiting either. Flight costs are a function of airlines gouging. I’ve taken UA, JL, CA, MU, NH MH and CX from/to China recently and all except for the CX flight to HKG had significant empty seats.

I feel like the luckiest guy in the world right now. I have an appointment in the visa application center in Hong kong this afternoon and just saw the news. Guess I'll be saving my 1100 HKD and going to the mainland tomorrow. Will post an update of my experience afterwards.

We are flying into China early in the morning on the 15th, originally for transit, will now switch to using my old visa.

Oh that's good news. Perhaps a summer vacation there is in the cards.

It all depends on the price!

MF (Xiamen) seems to have reasonable prices from AMS and regular schedules even from current times, but MU not quite there yet. For sure, Europe - Asia schedule recovery has been slower than North America - Asia.

How much of that is due to not being able to overfly Russia?

I know that is what is holding back Air Canada from reinstating a lot of their routes.

Chinese airlines continue to utilise normal routing over Russia (except CX and Taiwan-based airlines) so travel times aren't significantly affected. Actually that's a major draw for me, not spending an extra 2-3h on a plane.

I think also business travel has been slow to resume to Asia, so the normally-strong premium demand just isn't back yet.