Some background reading for those under a rock or outside China:
24 Changes You Need to Know About (http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/happysheep/shangri-la-la/1212575580.html)
Overview
The timing is crystal: just as the olympic torch rally was jeered and jostled by protesters in Paris and across America the CCP hit panic stations with some of the toughest visa regulations I have ever seen. During this period only tourist 30-day 1-way-entry visas will be handed out that must be accompanied by a hotel receipts. Afterwards you will have to go back to your own country with even Hong Kong - the one-spot-shop for chinese visas - being barred. Colleges in Hongkong who run the show on the mainland have reported that most business visas have been rejected. Short term students are also having grief (including me).
Other security
The olympics is a very sensitive issue and it cuts both ways. In hangzhou the number of "I Love China" shirts ballooned at a bewildering rate, but in BJ i saw not a single shirt around the ground and i was told on good authority they have been banned to avoid 'nationalistic displays'.
At the airports foreigner and chinese alike are being searched fanatically. Every MTR station in BJ did a bag search which make traveling about as smooth as a hongkong tram.
Knee-jerk-reaction?
As previously mentioned business, especially operating out of HK, is not happy with this Visa fiacso. There is a fine line between ensuring an incident free olympics and pissing everyone off. But i have also heard that the hotels in Beijing, many specially built for the olympics, were not near half capacity. I can testify first hand that the student and foreign areas in Beijing were near-empty. Tourism dollars drying up is one thing, but i have heard of foreigners being targeted in beijing and hassled into producing valid visas, this is not generating much good will either.
The threat?
I will not mince words: in the west there are a lot of china haters about and in some media quarters its actually fashionable to mindlessly bash. Whether this is because of some western insecurity or a moralistic disdain for the neo-thug workings of the CCP, there was a queue of mud throwers waiting outside the gates of Beijing. But with chinese so firmly behind the olympics any foreign displays of "free TTT" would only have hardened public sentiment and backfired on the cause. Also, every olympics is littered with political posturing, boycotts and protests, China is not a special case. I understand the olympics was firstly a showcase for the Chinese, second for the world, but China does not need new enemies/critics in the west because of clumsily and hastily assembled visa regulations.
Lets hope they are amended within the month.
24 Changes You Need to Know About (http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/happysheep/shangri-la-la/1212575580.html)
Overview
The timing is crystal: just as the olympic torch rally was jeered and jostled by protesters in Paris and across America the CCP hit panic stations with some of the toughest visa regulations I have ever seen. During this period only tourist 30-day 1-way-entry visas will be handed out that must be accompanied by a hotel receipts. Afterwards you will have to go back to your own country with even Hong Kong - the one-spot-shop for chinese visas - being barred. Colleges in Hongkong who run the show on the mainland have reported that most business visas have been rejected. Short term students are also having grief (including me).
Other security
The olympics is a very sensitive issue and it cuts both ways. In hangzhou the number of "I Love China" shirts ballooned at a bewildering rate, but in BJ i saw not a single shirt around the ground and i was told on good authority they have been banned to avoid 'nationalistic displays'.
At the airports foreigner and chinese alike are being searched fanatically. Every MTR station in BJ did a bag search which make traveling about as smooth as a hongkong tram.
Knee-jerk-reaction?
As previously mentioned business, especially operating out of HK, is not happy with this Visa fiacso. There is a fine line between ensuring an incident free olympics and pissing everyone off. But i have also heard that the hotels in Beijing, many specially built for the olympics, were not near half capacity. I can testify first hand that the student and foreign areas in Beijing were near-empty. Tourism dollars drying up is one thing, but i have heard of foreigners being targeted in beijing and hassled into producing valid visas, this is not generating much good will either.
The threat?
I will not mince words: in the west there are a lot of china haters about and in some media quarters its actually fashionable to mindlessly bash. Whether this is because of some western insecurity or a moralistic disdain for the neo-thug workings of the CCP, there was a queue of mud throwers waiting outside the gates of Beijing. But with chinese so firmly behind the olympics any foreign displays of "free TTT" would only have hardened public sentiment and backfired on the cause. Also, every olympics is littered with political posturing, boycotts and protests, China is not a special case. I understand the olympics was firstly a showcase for the Chinese, second for the world, but China does not need new enemies/critics in the west because of clumsily and hastily assembled visa regulations.
Lets hope they are amended within the month.
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