Chinese Economy: General News, Updates and Discussions

[Nan Yang]

I flew from Scotland to China in 2024

went to the Chinese embassy in Edinburgh and whole process took less than 20 mins

within 3 days I had a multiple reentry visa lasting 2 years

I went to once get a emergency British passport in Glasgow and it took a whole day

2 years only? Multiple entry VISA should be 10 years.

 

[神威98]

China tourism industry that targets overseas Chinese needs a major overhaul. The first two times I went to China I got a cold exactly after 1 week in. And I was still coughing phlegm three weeks later on the return flight home.

Now, I'm averse to traveling to China thru any kind of tour package you book with a travel agent in North America. It's the group meals that's the main source of infection. Everyone on the shared van to the HSR station or airport after the first week was showing symptoms of being infected.

Most Chinese restaurants in China don't share the same concept of hygiene as the Chinese restaurants in North America. In North America, if you eat as a group, they always provide extra chopsticks and spoons for you to get the food from the shared plate onto your own plate. You never use your own chopsticks nor spoon to get the food onto your own plate. That's just gross.

In China, they expect you to use the same chopsticks that's been in your mouth already covered in your own saliva to get food from the shared plate. They don't have the concept that there should be two kinds of chopsticks and spoons often of different colors or shapes: the personal ones and the shared ones.

After they catch a cold in the first week of their month long stay in China, most overseas Chinese are scared to book any subsequent trips to China that involves group meals together with other overseas Chinese.

In essence, most tour package tourists to China are usually noobs that don't know better. The veterans will simply shun this channel to drive China's tourism industry. This is a problem China needs to address at the national level, if they want repeat business not just from overseas Chinese that on their first time to China.

If you must travel to China. Avoid prebooking tour packages at all costs. Go free style and book your own hotels. Eat only with other family members not forced together with some 10-20 other overseas tourists at the same dining table. When you spend 3/4th of the time in China dealing with a preventable cold instead of enjoying yourself, what is even the point of traveling to China?

China cleaned up her act when she's hosting a major international (sports) events (ie. no dog meat, no gross sounding delicacies). Why can't she do something simple for her tourism industry by mandating all tour packages to book only state-sponsored restaurants that serve individual meals to their clients instead of group meals?

 

[Aziqbal]

I just realised that Chinese GDP for 2025 crossed $20 trillion for the first time

 

[Beijingwalker]

EU trade deficit with China reaches record €1bn a day, data shows​

Import and export figures come as European leaders prepare to meet this week to address growing imbalance
Mon 15 Jun 2026 15.51 BST

Shipping containers stacked on a ship at a French port. The gap between the EU’s imports from China and exports to China amounted to €31.9bn in April. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
https://www.google.com/preferences/source?q=theguardian.com
The EU’s trade deficit with China has reached a record €1bn (£0.8bn) a day, according to official trade data, fuelling concerns over the future of Europe’s “industrial backbone”.

The gap between the EU’s imports from China and exports to China amounted to €31.9bn in April, according to the latest import and export data from the EU statistics body Eurostat.

The data comes as European leaders prepare to meet on Thursday to discuss measures to address the growing trade imbalance, which includes the increased presence of Chinese electric cars – exported by a heavily subsidised industry – in Europe and the use of everyday components in factories across the bloc.

The trade expert Rafael Jimenez Buendía, a senior fellow at the Mercator Institute for China Studies, said the trade data for May and June was likely to show that deficit growing further.

“Shipments already recorded by China customs but still at sea and not yet captured by EU customs data suggest that the roughly €1bn-per-day trade deficit is likely to persist in the EU’s May and June figures, to be released in July and August,” he said.

Alexander Julius, the president of Eurometal, the trade organisation representing buyers of steel products, urged EU leaders to wake up to the dangers his members think China is posing to factories across Europe.

“We are really suffering so much, and the politicians are going in completely the wrong direction, and they don’t realise how much the Chinese are destroying the industrial backbone of Europe,” he said.

“If you end up relying on China, China can dictate what parts will be made available to us that we are not producing any more, they will dictate the quantity and the price,” he said, adding that the situation could prove particularly difficult for defence industries.

China’s growing trade surplus with the EU has led to warnings that the bloc could be facing a “China Shock 2.0”, repeating the experience of the US, which resulted in industries being mothballed in what became known as the “rust belt” after Beijing joined the World Trade Organization more than 20 years ago.

The European trade commissioner, Maroš Šefčovič, told a conference in Brussels earlier this month that the deficit had to be addressed.

The European Commission is thought to have discussed several options, with tariffs the least likely option given the “political heavy lifting” involved in getting buy-in.

Another option analysts believe is more viable is quotas imposed on imports of Chinese chemicals and hybrid cars.

Imports of the latter have soared since 2024 when the EU imposed tariffs on electric vehicles but not hybrids.

Beijing has repeatedly rejected allegations of Chinese exporters unfairly benefiting from state subsidies, and last week said it has “never deliberately pursued a trade surplus”.

It has also argued that a “significant share” of the surplus comes from EU companies manufacturing in China and re-exporting to the bloc.

In the run-up to the G7 meeting in Paris, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, has sought to make a last-ditch attempt at a cooperative approach before the EU decides whether to toughen its trade policy towards China.

With China absent from the table, no breakthroughs are expected. France has said ‌acknowledgment that a problem exists is a win in its own right.

The state-owned Xinhua news agency last week said that about half of China’s exports were components that “considerably reduce” costs for EU factories.

 

[神威98]

First time I went to China I was on guided bus tour in Beijing then flew to Zhangjiajie National Park for another guided bus tour then flew back to Beijing to catch return flight home.

I don't remember how that took up almost a month's stay in China, but there wasn't a single lunch nor dinner where we didn't eat together with other overseas tourists from the same bus and transmitted our saliva through the shared food plates.

I got sick before flying to Zhangjiajie National Park and didn't even get better until weeks after I returned home.

Second time I visited China I was in Guangzhou for a guided bus tour before taking the HSR to Chaoshan (where they speak the same Chinese dialect as the currently hit screening movie Dear You) for another guided bus tour.

There wasn't a lunch nor dinner where we didn't eat together with other tourists on the same bus. We transmitted our salivas thru the shared food plates and I got sick at the end of the bus tour before catching the HSR to Chaoshan.

I didn't even get better till weeks after returning home. After the guided bus tour in Chaoshan, we headed to Shenzhen for freestyle tourism. The room service crew there was scared to enter our hotel room again for fear of catching a flu after they saw the mountain of used face tissues piled up in the garbage can.

I can imagine it must suck to be a travel agent in North America. After their clients get sick travel to China they might think it's just a fluke chance. But then they get sick again on their second trip and they never book another tour package to China ever again!

(BTW, I'm currently on my third trip to China. It's been three weeks so far and I am still OK. I never ate with other tourists. There was a 3-day tour to Shaolin temple where we booked a guided tour.

I thought I would have to go on a bus again and eat with other people and get sick all over again. I was surprised it's just a minivan with no other travelers beside us and the tour guide and van driver. This kind of thing actually exists in China and something I really like. Guided bus tours with some 50 other tourists are the suck...

Chinese officials don't realize it but they have such an unhealthy tourism industry that needs to be shaken up and reformed)