China promotes digital tourism, payment services for overseas personnel

BEIJING, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities have issued guidelines on enhancing the convenience of digital services for the entry of foreigners and people from outside the Chinese mainland, including measures to improve basic digital services and digital payment systems.

This approach is designed to further promote the country's high-standard opening up, according to the guidelines jointly issued by 11 authorities and departments including the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the People's Bank of China. The guidelines were posted on the CAC website on Thursday.

The guidelines call for addressing bottlenecks in digital services for personnel from overseas to make the country's digital environment more internationalized and convenient.

The guidelines define 14 measures, such as strengthening basic digital services by providing more accessible telecommunication services for overseas personnel and enhancing the convenience of digital payment by better supporting the use of overseas e-wallet services within the Chinese mainland.

The document also mandates the enhancement of digital services in foreign languages, encouraging relevant service platforms to provide translation features or multilingual versions.

Improved digital services should be provided to enhance the tourism, shopping, and dining experiences for overseas personnel. Efforts should also be made to make integrated digital service information available on mobile apps that are widely used by foreigners in China, it says.

It further calls for upgraded digital public services for overseas personnel, including those regarding healthcare, education, investment and entrepreneurship and government services.

The need to enhance the protection of cybersecurity, data security and personal information privacy is also stressed. ■