{"id":427124,"date":"2026-02-15T14:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/427124\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T14:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:17:07","slug":"china-confirms-visa-free-travel-for-uk-and-canadian-nationals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/427124\/","title":{"rendered":"China confirms visa-free travel for UK and Canadian nationals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Announcing the policy’s start date on Sunday, China’s foreign ministry said the scheme would “further facilitate people-to-people exchanges between China and other countries”.<\/p>\n

The move brings rules for UK and Canada passport holders into line with 50 other countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Australia and Japan.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of British people could potentially benefit from the change, with around 620,000 travelling to China in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.<\/p>\n

During his official visit to China in January, Sir Keir said British businesses had been “crying out for ways to grow their footprints in China”.<\/p>\n

Xi and Sir Keir also agreed to deepen trade relations in services, healthcare, green technology and finance – though no sweeping trade free trade agreement was announced.<\/p>\n

The visit, which was the first by a British prime minister since Theresa May in 2018, was criticised by some opposition figures. <\/p>\n

Shortly before heading to China, Sir Keir’s government approved plans for a major new Chinese embassy<\/a> in central London, despite opponents claiming it could be used as a base for spying and pose security risks. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Announcing the policy’s start date on Sunday, China’s foreign ministry said the scheme would “further facilitate people-to-people exchanges…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":427125,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-427124","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=427124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/427125"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=427124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=427124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=427124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}