(TibetanReview.net, Jan03’26) – China in Jun 2024 declared 2025 as “Visit Nepal Year in China” and promised to bring at least 500,000 Chinese tourists to the country. However, the Himalayan country has registered negative growth from China, which may be partly because of the absence of any change in Beijing’s greatly tightened policy over the past many years of effectively denying passport to ordinary Tibetans.
During the 16th round of the Nepal–China diplomatic consultation mechanism meeting held in Kathmandu, China unveiled plans to promote Nepal as a key destination for Chinese travellers, declaring 2025 as “Visit Nepal Year in China”. Informally, senior Chinese officials pledged to bring at least 500,000 Chinese tourists to Nepal, reported kathmandupost.com Jan 3.
But despite the diplomatic fanfare, arrivals from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) registered negative growth. According to the Department of Immigration, arrivals from China fell 6.3% year-on-year to 95,480 visitors last year, putting paid to Nepal’s struggling tourism sector’s hope for a much-needed boost from the announcement, the report said.
Tibetans have historically visited Nepal in large numbers for pilgrimage, business, tourism, and family reunions. The report, however, did not specifically cite this as a reason for the declined number of visitor’s from the People’s Republic of China.
“What went wrong is obvious,” Mani Raj Lamichhane, a director at the Nepal Tourism Board, the official tourism promotion body, has said. “The marketing and promotional segment was poorly planned. We did conduct promotional activities in different Chinese cities, but they failed to generate demand.”
Earier, on Dec 25, 2015, Nepal announced a free visa policy for Chinese tourists, granting them the same treatment as visitors from South Asia. Implemented in Jan 2016, the policy helped revive arrivals. Chinese tourist numbers rose steadily thereafter, with Nepal recording its strongest growth—46.8%—in 2018, when arrivals reached 153,633.
But Tibetans were obviously not among them in any viable number as China never relaxed its prohibitively stringent passport rules for them.
Since around 2012, authorities in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) and adjacent Tibetan-populated areas have confiscated passports and rarely issued replacements to local Tibetans. As a result, very few Tibetans having officials connections hold passports, meaning they are unable to travel abroad for purposes such as pilgrimages, family visits, study, tourism or work, even though they are supposed to be Chinese citizens.
New York-based Human Rights Watch earlier noted that China had an ongoing two-tier system for passport issuance: Tibetans (and other ethnic minorities in certain regions) face far more stringent procedures and scrutiny compared to Han Chinese applicants. Local officials can require additional layers of review and approvals, and travel for religious reasons (eg, to attend teachings by the Dalai Lama) is treated as suspicious or unlawful.
While there is no known law as such overhauling the passport policy for Tibetans, China’s ongoing practice involves severely restricted access to passports for ethnic Tibetans, effectively curtailing their right to travel internationally.