China's cross-border trips rise 7.9% in third quarter

China's immigration authorities handled 192 million cross-border trips in the third quarter, up 7.9 percent year-on-year, Lyu Ning, a spokeswoman for the National Immigration Administration, said at a news conference on Tuesday.

During this period, foreign nationals made 11.6 million trips to China, up 15.6 percent year-on-year. Of these, 8.99 million were visa-free arrivals, accounting for 77.5 percent of all foreign arrivals and marking a 24.1 percent year-on-year increase, Lyu said.

The top 10 countries of origin for foreign arrivals were Russia, South Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia, the United States, Mongolia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, and Australia. Together, they accounted for 63.9 percent of all foreign arrivals. The total included 95.96 million cross-border trips by mainland residents and 73.14 million by residents of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, up 7.4 percent and 6.4 percent year-on-year, respectively.

Mainland residents made 48.5 million outbound trips in the third quarter, up 7.5 percent year-on-year. The top 10 destinations were Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, and Indonesia.

Meanwhile, immigration authorities inspected 10.96 million cross-border vehicles in the third quarter, up 10.6 percent year-on-year. These included 259,000 aircraft movements, roughly unchanged from the same period last year, according to the NIA.