Planning and building a regional visa center is an innovative move to create a new opening-up highland in Jinan and display the city's image as an open city.
1. Brief introduction of visa agencies in Jinan
Since the British Embassy established its first visa agency in Jinan in 2005, 24 countries including Germany, France and Canada have followed suit. All holders of regular private passports can submit visa applications in Jinan for business, tourism, family visits and studying abroad in those countries. At present, the private visa applications are mainly accepted by four agencies scattering in Lixia, Zhongshi, Tianqiao and Huaiyin districts. There are more than 20 visa centers across the city.
2. Advantages of constructing a regional visa center
(1) Advantageous location and convenient transportation. Foreign embassies and consulates in China tend to offer visa services in provincial capital cities with convenient transportation and strong economic radiation. For example, 25 countries have offered visa services in Hangzhou, 24 countries have opened visa services in Jinan and 19 countries have such services in Wuhan. Jinan is an important node city between Beijing and Shanghai and is connected with 244 cities across the country by high-speed railway. It is an important comprehensive transportation hub in China.
(2) Basic resources. As the political, economic and cultural center of Shandong province, Jinan has 49 colleges and universities and is home to many governmental offices, public institutions and enterprises. The number of visa agencies and intermediary organs in Jinan accounts for 26 percent of the province's total. It meets the basic requirements for setting a regional visa center.
(3) Huge market potential. In 2017, all the visa agencies and intermediary offices in Jinan handled 81,913 visa applications. More than 66 percent of the applications came from Shandong and the rest came from outside the province. Only 13 percent of the applications from Shandong came from Jinan. According to the new policies, the entry-exit administration of public security authorities has stopped accrediting the qualifications of visa intermediaries starting Nov 10. It is expected that the visa intermediary business will experience blowout growth. Last year, the entry-exit administration of the Jinan Public Security Bureau accepted 504,000 applicants who wished to travel abroad for private reasons. During the January-November period, 554,000 people went abroad, up 16.13 percent year-on-year. There is a strong demand for visas for traveling abroad, studying abroad and visiting overseas relatives.
3. Significance of a regional visa center
According to incomplete statistics, Jinan has attracted nearly 120,000 people from both inside and outside the province to go through visa-related formalities. This number is increasing at a rate of more than 20 percent per year, which directly promotes local catering, accommodation, tourism, training, studying abroad, legal services and other industries. If the regional visa center is located in a high-end industrial park and human resource cluster, a new industrial chain ecological circle integrating human resources, legal services, commerce, trade and tourism will be formed. It will also change Jinan's long-held role as a transit city. The siphon effect brought by the visa center will also lay a solid foundation for inviting more foreign consulates in Jinan.
4. Goals and tasks
Jinan will integrate the resources of private visa agencies and build a regional visa center in the city, creating an aggregation effect to attract more visa agencies from other countries to settle in Jinan, gradually form a new industrial chain taking foreign visa services as its core, and promote the city's internationalization.
(1) Overall planning:
The regional visa center will be built in two phases: the first phase -- construction of a visa center incubator -- will be completed by the end of 2018; the second phase -- a visa center -- will be set up in 2021.
(2) Site of the visa center incubator: the visa center incubator will be located in the Qianfoshan Building in the northeast corner of the intersection of Wenhua West Road and Foshan Street in Lixia district.
(3) Site of the visa center: It will be built in the Human Resource Industrial Park in the CBD of Lixia district.
