QUESTION: How can a Chinese citizen get permission to take a trip to Europe or the United States? Answer: Go for a short holiday first to Singapore.
As China's economy expands, a new generation of affluent people wishing to travel far afield have had to find devious ways of getting, past bureaucratic barriers put in place by the communist government.
A 27-year-old Chinese woman who is a manager in a Beijing department store explained to me how it works.
"If I want to go to Europe or the United States, even just for a month, I must get a foreign passport from the Public Security Bureau, but to get a foreign passport I have to get a letter of approval from my work unit," she said. "They probably won't give me, a letter. They will raise objections. They will say: `You are an essential worker', or `Why should you go when we can't?' or `If we let you go you won't come back'. They will definitely refuse anyone who is politically suspect.
"Even if they do give me a letter, they will then dismiss me and make me leave my apartment, which goes with the job. Most work units insist on that. And it could take weeks to get the passport from the Public Security Bureau. And then a year to get a foreign visa. I would be a non-person during all that time.
"But if I go to the work unit and say I want to just visit a relative in Singapore for a few days, then there is no problem, because so many people have family there. I can get a `relative' through connections to send me an invitation. The unit will give me the letter and allow me to keep my job and apartment. And I can then get a passport from the Public Security Bureau with a big exit sticker on it allowing me to go to Singapore.
"But the thing is - when I come back, I have a passport which is valid for five years and I don't need a letter from the work unit for a second trip abroad, it doesn't matter where to. I know lots of people who have gone to Singapore or Bangkok to see cousins who don't exist and just looked around for a few days and come home again," she said. "Then they can just apply for a visa from a foreign embassy. They mightn't get it but they will still have their jobs and homes."
The young businesswoman confided that she herself had arranged a short trip to Singapore this month with her husband so that they could then apply to the Australian embassy for a visa - their real destination is Sydney - which could take a year.
She has just cancelled her Singapore Airlines ticket, she said, - with some glee. It is no longer necessary. The Chinese authorities last week announced an easing of the regulations governing exit visas. A letter from the work collective will no longer be required. Applicants for foreign passports will be obliged to submit only materials specific to the purpose of their visit, said Mr Xu Ganlu, director of the Bureau of Exit and Entry Administration of the Public Security Bureau. The traffic of Chinese "day-trippers" to Singapore and Bangkok is about to stop.
Mr Xu was responding to the pressures of an increasing number of Chinese able to travel abroad. The numbers who succeed have been steadily increasing, he said. During the first half of this year, 710,000 foreign passports were issued, compared to 970,000 for the whole of last year. That, in turn, was up 37.5 per cent on 1994. In the past six years 4.3 million Chinese travelled abroad (and 4.6 million to Hong Kong or Macao).
The barriers facing Chinese citizens who manage to get a foreign passport are still formidable. Security police guarding foreign embassies in Beijing, many of which have enticing country photographs on external display boards, will routinely refuse to allow people to enter to acquire application forms.
The Irish embassy issued over 600 visas to Chinese citizens in the past 12 months, an increase of 15 to 20 per cent over the previous year. About half of these were for employees of Ericsson, the telecommunications company which has a training school in Dublin.
All European countries require letters of invitation before issuing visas, and it is virtually impossible for a Chinese resident to get a simple tourist visa. There are ways around this as well.
Business visas are relatively easy to come by, and quite often, according to a diplomat, a group of a dozen people from a big plant or a Chinese city will be given business visas. But only two will be on business - and the other 10 will be tourists.