BEIJING, June 3 -- The number of foreign nationals' visits to Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai has picked up to or even surpassed the pre-pandemic levels in 2019, the latest statistics showed.

The municipal bureau of statistics in Shanghai recently revealed that the city in April received about 670,900 inbound foreign tourist visits, marking a 40.5 percent year-on-year increase. The figure for April 2019 was 640,800.

Over the same period, Beijing saw 454,920 inbound foreign visitors, according to figures from the city's municipal bureau of culture and tourism. This has outnumbered that for the same month in 2019, which stood at 368,281, by 23.5 percent.

Thanks to China's expanded visa-free policies and ever-improving tourist-friendly initiatives, the country recorded 64.88 million border crossings by foreign nationals in 2024, an 82.9-percent increase year on year. Of these, more than 20 million inbound foreign trips were made visa-free. In the first quarter of this year, the number stood at 17.44 million, up 33.4 percent compared to the same period in 2024.

The latest move, on Sunday, saw the initiation of a trial policy that unilaterally grants visa-free entry to citizens of Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Uruguay. It is the first time that China has extended such access to nations in Latin America and the Caribbean.

With this expansion, China now offers unilateral visa-free entry to 43 countries.

A more open and inclusive China is also welcoming foreign travelers from a wider spectrum: statistics in Beijing revealed that despite a decline in the number of American visitors and steady numbers of visitors from Oceania, the numbers of tourists from Asia, Europe, and Africa respectively all saw evident growth from the pre-pandemic levels.

In Asia, the number of visitors from Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand to Beijing in April grew by around threefold from those in April 2019.

The number of inbound visitors from Mongolia to Beijing has increased to 15,345 in April, about six times the number in the same period six years ago, while the number for Vietnam reached 16,715, marking an approximate tenfold rise. As the countries are yet covered by China's visa-free policies, observers attribute such growth to factors such as economic development.

Meanwhile, inbound visitors from Russia and Italy have also seen remarkable increases.

The number of visitors from African countries has increased from 7,571 in April 2019 to 11,162 in the same month this year.