China Simplifies Procedures for Chinese Going OverseasAltogether 11,736 individuals in north China's Tianjin municipality went abroad on private business in the first quarter of the year, a rise of 50 percent over that during the same period last year.Officials at the Tianjin Bureau in charge of entry and exit visas attributed this to the simplified application procedures issued at the beginning of the year. According to the new amendments, 4,000 US dollars is all that a local citizen needs to apply for a passport to travel or study abroad. Those who want to go abroad self-funded just need to show their acceptance notices from a foreign university when applying for a passport. Procedures for working and doing business in foreign countries have also been simplified. Altogether 2,414 Tianjiners went abroad for travel, and 1,373 to Macao and Hong Kong, four times more than during the same period last year. For the first quarter, 2,024 Tianjiners went overseas for business and seventy-six left China for jobs in other countries. There were also 522 people who went abroad to study, 70 percent more than the same period last year. The new amendments also saw a 78 percent of increase in applicants visiting friends and family members abroad, totaling 4,618 in the first three months of the year. In the past, requirement for a number of personal documents took a long time, discouraging many Chinese from going overseas. |
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