In times past, business people in China had to wait for overseas
business to come to them and most people could only dream of
traveling to distant countries. But things have changed in this
increasingly open and market-oriented country.
"We used to have to wait for customers to call us, due to tedious
formalities for traveling abroad for business opportunities," said
Liu Junquan, general manager of Mark Cheung based in Zhongshan
city, south China's Guangdong Province. "Now it is much easier for
us to go abroad."
Thanks to the simplification of passport application, the lamp
sector of Zhongshan's Guzhen Town has gone international. Business
people from many private firms in the town now often travel to
Europe, America and the Middle East for expositions and trade
fairs.
The business opportunities gained through these travels helped
increase the number of lamp enterprises from 1,100 to more than 1,
400 in the town in the past year alone. Among them export companies
grew from 28 to 73.
The simplified passport application procedure, which was introduced
in April 2001 on a trial basis in Zhongshan, requires only ID cards
and permanent residence documents. In early November, the reform
spread to Guangzhou, the provincial capital, and on to the whole
Pearl River Delta, an economically developed area in south
China.
Ren Yingchao, a passport administrator of the Ministry of Public
Security, said though the simplification of the passport
application procedure was a small reform, it represents a big step
forward the government has had in fulfilling its commitments to the
World Trade Organization and improving public service.
Statistics show that from 1949 to 1978, only 210,000 Chinese people
were allowed to go abroad, about 7,000 a year. The figure became
50,000 per year in the 1979-1985 period. From 1986, when new rules
on exit and entry took effect, until 2001, a total of 18. 1 million
people were approved to go outside China for private purposes, an
average of 1.13 million annually.
The easing of restrictions has also spurred outbound tourism in the
Pearl River Delta. According to the Guangdong provincial tourism
administration, four million tourists went overseas for personal
purposes last year, up 910,000, or 29.66 percent, from a year
earlier.
(Eastday.com November 13, 2002)