[July 1, Oriental Daily News]Recently, the Japanese Consulate in Guangzhou suddenly issued a notice to revoke the right of 11 Chinese travel agencies to process tourist visa applications to Japan. When this news spread, it sparked a debate in both Japan and China about tightening visa regulations for visiting Japan, and many netizens linked this incident to the graffiti incident at Yasukuni Shrine by a Chinese internet celebrity earlier this month. But is this really the case?
Currently, Chinese tourists need to apply for a Japanese tourist visa to visit Japan. Since applicants cannot go directly to a consulate to obtain a tourist visa, travel agencies that have the authority to process tourist visa applications for Japan handle the related procedures.
According to the notice, based on the “Guidelines for Travel to Japan by Citizens of the People’s Republic of China,” 11 travel agencies in the Guangzhou region (including Guangdong Province, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Fujian Province, and Hainan Province) have had their right to process tourist visa applications for Japan revoked. Among them are some relatively large and established travel agencies.
According to industry insiders, the measure was taken because some travel agencies were suspected of being involved in document forgery and providing false documents to applicants. At the time, many Chinese netizens suspected that the cancellation of the right to process visa applications for visits to Japan of these large travel agencies was directly related to the Yasukuni Shrine graffiti incident.
However, this assumption is not reasonable. On the other hand, if a Chinese person who obtained a visa using forged documents causes problems such as illegal residence in Japan, the travel agency that processed the visa application should bear joint responsibility. The cancellation of the right to process tourist visa applications for Japan should not be over-interpreted. Furthermore, with the yen continuing to weaken, Japan’s tourism industry has become one of the means to revitalize the Japanese economy, and attracting as many Chinese tourists with purchasing power as possible is an urgent issue for Japanese tourism operators.
As the issue spread, the consulate responded on June 18, saying it “regularly reviews its designated travel agencies to better serve visa applicants.”
The Japanese Consulate in Guangzhou said, “We are preparing to add new designated travel agencies and restore processing rights that have been temporarily revoked based on the service content and performance of the travel agencies. There is no need to worry as the changes to the list of designated travel agencies will not affect the visa issuance conditions. In addition, the visa application conditions have not changed.”
According to an announcement by the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO) on June 20, the number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan in May 2024 is expected to be around 540,000, a recovery of around 72 percent from the same period in 2019, and is steadily increasing. Against this backdrop, the Japan National Tourism Organization held a Japan Travel Business Meeting in Beijing for the first time in five years. Ichiro Takahashi, Commissioner-General of the Japan Tourism Agency, said that each region is working to discover and polish the potential tourist attractions of their area, and that he hopes that Chinese tourists will visit regional cities in Japan. (c)Oriental Daily News/AFPBB News
Source: Japanese