Beijing attaches great importance to facilitating people-to-people exchanges between China and Russia, said the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday, following Russian President Vladimir Putin's statement on Tuesday that a visa-free travel mechanism for Chinese citizens visiting Russia would take effect in the near future.

At a regular press conference on Wednesday, spokeswoman for the ministry Mao Ning said that as each other's largest neighbors, the mutual visa exemption between China and Russia will further enhance people-to-people exchanges and serve the common interests of both nations.

China had previously decided to implement a trial visa exemption policy, effective from Sept 15, 2025, to Sept 14, 2026, which allows Russian ordinary passport holders to enter China without a visa for such purposes as business, tourism, sightseeing, visiting relatives, exchanges, and transit, with the stipulation that the stay does not exceed 30 days.

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Rise in flight searches

Meanwhile, searches for flights to Russia by Chinese travelers surged after Putin's announcement.

As of 9 am on Wednesday, both the search volume for flights to Moscow and its search growth rate have ranked among top 10 globally, according to Qunar, a Beijing-based online travel agency.

The top five most popular departure cities according to the searches are Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen of Guangdong province, and Chengdu, Sichuan province, with searches from Beijing in particular ballooning by 3.4 times compared to data from an hour before the announcement.

The search volume for flights from Chinese cities to St. Petersburg has also grown significantly, with some of the most popular departure cities including Wuhan, Hubei province, Tianjin, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

Since the beginning of this year, Russia has been one of the fastest-growing outbound travel destinations. As of Wednesday, the number of hotel bookings in Russia this year has grown by 43 percent over the same period last year, while the number of flight bookings has risen by 29 percent year-on-year, Qunar found.

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So far, the number of flights operating between China and Russia has rebounded to 94.9 percent of the pre-pandemic level seen in 2019. Among these flights, Chinese carriers operate more than 52 percent, according to Flight Master, a Chinese travel services platform.