China's recent extending of its visa-free policy to the citizens of nine countries, including Japan, will not only increase personnel exchanges between China and these countries, but also become an important symbol of its expanded opening-up.

In addition to adding the nine countries to its visa-exemption list, effective from Nov 30 to the end of 2025, China has decided to further optimize the visa-free policy, including exchanges and visit purposes into the visa-free entry scope, and extending the period of visa-free stays from 15 to 30 days.

Since the end of last year when China experimented with unilateral visa-free policies for multiple countries in Europe and Southeast Asia, Japan kept communication lines open with China, requesting the resumption of the visa-free policy it had enjoyed to facilitate its business and personnel exchanges with China. The new measure will add new incentives to economic and trade ties between the two countries. Half an hour after China announced the policy, searches for Chinese destinations on online travel agency Ctrip.com's overseas platforms surged, with a 112 percent increase from Japan.

The measure will also help consolidate the foundation of bilateral relations, which has been rocked by various factors from the Japanese side. "The most important foundation of Japan-China relations is exchanges between the two peoples," Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said recently.

Increasing people-to-people exchanges will help eliminate mutual misperceptions, enhance mutual understanding and improve economic and trade relations between the two countries.

China and Japan have been interdependent in economic and trade spheres, and restarting the visa-free policy could rekindle economic and trade enthusiasm, which had lost steam since the pandemic, facilitate Japanese exports to and investment in China, and help Japanese companies seize new business opportunities brought by China's renewed economic development momentum.

For a long time, Japan's policy toward China has been largely restrained by the baton of the United States, and on many China-related issues it just toes the US line, adopting an unfriendly stance toward China. Japan should wake up to the reality that long-term friendly China-Japan relations cannot be built on China's unilateral goodwill, sincerity and efforts, and that it cannot unilaterally enjoy the "economic dividends" from China while continuing to take actions that undermine bilateral friendship in other aspects.

The Chinese government has always attached great importance to facilitating personnel exchanges between China and foreign countries. The Japanese side is expected to work with China to jointly enhance the level of facilitation of personnel exchanges between the two countries by reciprocating China's friendly gesture.