BEIJING – A minimalist villa nestled among lush forests, misty limestone peaks and cinematic skyline views: striking Instagram reels like these finally convinced Claire Thum to make her first trip to China. The 28-year-old Singaporean is one of millions of foreign tourists who visited the country in 2025, when arrivals and tourist spending surpassed pre-pandemic levels for the first time.Thum knew only of terracotta warriors until Chinese travel content began regularly popping up on her feed. “To me, the first step to exploring more of China was to dip my toes into Shanghai,” she said.Highlights included a visit to the viral perfumery To Summer with its signature garden, a snowboarding simulation experience and picking out winter clothes at Japanese sportswear store Descente. Now she’s planning another trip to China, with the far-flung regions of Yunnan, Xinjiang and Harbin top of her list.After years of pandemic restrictions, in 2023 China launched a massive push to win back tourists with the gradual introduction of visa-free travel for 50 countries. That campaign got off to a slow start, as memories of Covid curbs hurt the country’s reputation and flight routes took time to come back. But now tourists appear to be returning much faster.That’s partly thanks to an online promotion campaign the government ramped up in 2025, including on Western platforms banned in China. At the same time, favourable views of the world’s second-largest economy reached record highs in a number of countries in 2025, according to Pew Research Center, as Donald Trump reshaped global impressions of America. Trends like ‘Chinamaxxing’ – where Western citizens adopt habits from the Asian country, such as drinking hot tea – also went viral.“The inbound tourism boom gives China the soft power boost it’s chased after for years,” said Olivia Plotnick, founder of Shanghai-based marketing consultancy Wai Social. “I’ve heard more than a few recent visitors to Shanghai tell me that in their eyes, Shanghai is the new Tokyo.”Around 35 million foreign tourists arrived in 2025 – more than Thailand and just shy of Japan and Malaysia - according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Nations leading the tourism surge so far in 2026 include Asian countries with visa-free entry such as South Korea, Russia, Malaysia and Thailand.In the first half of 2026, 18 million people arrived from visa-free countries, pushing overall foreign tourist arrivals up by 20 per cent. Beijing has seen surging numbers of Vietnamese and Russians in that period, while Japanese figures are in decline following a diplomatic spat between the two countries. Alongside relaxing visas, local governments provided cash to tourism offices, including an extra 2.64 million yuan (S$501,000) for Beijing in 2026 to manage new headcount and launch online publicity projects – a rare spend in local finances. Beijing used some of the money to hand out rewards to travel agencies that introduced foreign-language tour guides. Shanghai is due to spend at least 1.6 million yuan on promotional campaigns on popular hotel booking platforms Expedia and Booking.com this year, according to official procurement documents.To capitilise on the power of social media in luring young travelers, many officials have hopped over the Great Firewall to set up accounts on social media platforms like X and TikTok, unavailable in China. In the neon-lit mountainous mega-city of Chongqing, the deputy director general of tourism Zhu Mao said he was determined to make the city internet famous, leaning on influencers and even American basketball star Stephen Curry for boosts in popularity.“China becomes more vivid, multi-dimensional and more appealing when international tourists are no longer limited to visiting traditional tourists attractions, but instead start to experience the everyday local life,” said Bobo Rok, founder of AI tourist guide Kora. “From that moment on, they start to see a real China, not just something from paper or imagination.”Exploring high-tech products at Huawei and DJI, shopping at theme-park style Pop Mart stores or eating hot-pot at Haidilao feature high on to-do lists. The Iran war has also reshaped people’s travel habits by pushing up air ticket prices and driving transit traffic through China instead of the Middle East. China’s biggest airlines, state-run China Eastern, Air China and China Southern, all saw increasing flows of passengers filling its flights since the start of the Iran war. Chinese airlines offer cheaper prices than foreign carriers, which have not returned their routes to China back to pre-Covid levels.Despite the recovery of tourism, China still lags behind in both total tourism receipts and per-capita spending, generating less than one third of the inbound tourism spend compared to the US, and about 40 per cent the per-capita inbound spend, at around US$2,240 in China, according to Trip.com.The international tourism industry accounted for less than 0.5 per cent of China’s national GDP in 2025, Chinese media said, much lower than some mature tourism economies such Spain and Thailand where it’s 8 per cent.Still, it’s giving a much-needed boost to the Chinese retail sector which suffered from sluggish domestic consumption and a real estate market in the doldrums.At Miniso’s flagship store on Shanghai’s Nanjing East Road, foreign visitors account for up to 70 per cent of foot traffic during some parts of the day, drawn to collaborations with popular characters from Chiikawa, Sanrio, Harry Potter and Disney. Popularity with tourists has also continued in branches abroad. Miniso reported rising overseas demand fuelled by social media exposure from international visitors, while overseas sales surpassed its Mainland China revenue and grew 20 per cent year on year.Joy Group, parent of viral beauty brand Judydoll and Joocyee, generated more than 600 million yuan in overseas retail sales in 2025, with Judydoll achieving over tenfold growth in two years, particularly in Vietnam and Japan. If China wants the curiosity to last it has to make the country an easier place to navigate. Major cities are virtually cashless, meaning for tourists without local bank accounts, digital payment wallets or local phone numbers it can be challenging to make payments, order food or buy tickets. A lack of language support is compounded by no access to mainstream global applications like Google, Instagram and WhatsApp unless using a VPN, which is illegal in China.AI tourist guide Kora is one of several new business ideas helping to ease the friction by simplifying ride-hailing and restaurant reservations and providing a chatbot that has served tens of thousands of visitors since its launch earlier this year, said Rok, its founder. BLOOMBERG