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. “To me, the first step to exploring more of China was to dip my toes into Shanghai,” she said. 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 is partly thanks to an online promotion campaign the government ramped up in 2025, including on Western platforms banned in China. 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.