Shenzhen, China's southern tech hub, has reported a swell of overseas visitors this year, an influx attributed to the country's expansion of visa-free entry and its integration of the Greater Bay Area, a region that incorporates Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macau.
In addition to visitors from China's two special administrative regions, many travellers to Shenzhen have come from farther afield, with Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Singapore ranking among the top sources of overseas tourists, state broadcaster CCTV reported on Wednesday.
The city's international airport has recorded over 152,000 visa-free entries by foreign nationals in 2025, a year-on-year surge of 160.3%. Total foreign passenger entries rose by 54.6% year-on-year to reach 531,000.
To keep pace with demand, a direct flight to Dubai from the city is scheduled to start in July, and multiple international routes were added this year to urban centres like Vientiane, Osaka, Singapore, Tokyo, Bangkok and Hanoi.
Shenzhen, home to tech giants Tencent and Huawei, is attractive to travellers because of its status as a trade and manufacturing nerve centre, its proximity to Hong Kong and relatively low cost of living.
"Shenzhen is very fun, more modern, less expensive, so I love going there on weekends, both for leisure and business," said Marc Guyon, founder of Hong Kong-based Club France International.
YouTube star IShowSpeed, who boasts 39.5 million followers on the video platform, conducted a five-hour live stream from the city in early April, which garnered 8.7 million views.
China began relaxing its entry procedures and granting visa waivers to visitors from a larger selection of countries in late 2023, aiming to attract foreign tourists back to the country after three years of strict pandemic-induced travel restrictions.
The policy, which was expanded at the end of last year to include a 240-hour visa-free transit, has significantly boosted tourism, although travel figures still lag behind pre-pandemic levels.
In 2024, a total of 20.1 million travellers came to China using visa-free entry, up 112% from the previous year, according to data from the National Immigration Administration.
There were 610 million inbound and outbound trips last year, with roughly 65 million trips involving overseas visitors, a healthy increase of 83%.
However, in 2019, foreigners accounted for nearly 98 million out of 670 million cross-border trips.