A new simplified travel permit application service will give Beijing residents easier access to Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. 

From Sunday, residents will only need to fill out an application form and hand in valid passes if they want to have their travel papers extended or renewed, municipal exit-entry authorities announced on Friday.

"Residence booklets and ID cards are no longer required for applications from Sunday," said Gao Huada, deputy head of the Division of Exit-Entry Administration of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau.

Multiple documents required for applying for one-year or three-year multi-entry business permits to Hong Kong and Macao will be slashed from the current eight forms to four from May 8, Gao added.

The four documents now required include residence booklets and ID cards. Business licenses, tax payment receipts, post certificates and dispatching letters are no longer needed.

Gao said the measures were to cope with the continuing sharp increase in passport applications -- especially those for Hong Kong and Macao.

Statistics show that between January and April this year, the division has endorsed more than 150,000 passes, a rise of 23 percent compared with the same period last year.

Gao said in the past four months, people applying for permits to Hong Kong and Macao took up more than half of the total applicants. The ratio was 40 percent in 2003 and 43 percent last year.

Among the applicants for permits to Hong Kong and Macao, 84 percent are planning individual trips. The ratio ranks first among the four municipalities and four provinces of the mainland that allowed residents to travel to the two regions for individual tours since September 2003, such as Guangdong, Shanghai and Tianjin.

Gao predicts the number of permits applicants planning for Hong Kong and Macao trips might jump between June and July as many parents would like to take their children to the two special administrative regions during the summer vacation.

"Cheaper tour fares caused by fierce competition among travel agencies and numerous promotions by the tourism authorities in the two regions have also fuelled permit applications," said Gao.

Liu Jiewei, another official with the municipal exit-entry administration, said the city had taken several strong measures to streamline the procedure for going abroad in the past few years.

The city shortened by half the time needed to process passes in June last year. "Beijing residents can get passes within five workdays after they apply instead of the previous 10," said Liu.

Liu said previously too much red tape and rubber stamping meant residents had to undergo an ordeal preparing to travel.

"It used to take two months to obtain a pass in the 1990s," recalled Liu.

"The time span was slashed to 20 workdays in 1992, to 10 workdays in 2003 and to five workdays last year," Liu added.

(China Daily May 7, 2005)