Heilongjiang has launched a 100-day summer tourism campaign built on ten themed routes, provincial authorities said, as China‘s northernmost province works to cut its reliance on winter travel.
Winter has carried the province. The 2024/25 cold season generated CNY211.72bn in tourism revenue, up 30.7% year on year, out of CNY370.12bn ($54.7bn) across the whole of 2024 on 280mn visits. Summer is the gap the province is trying to fill, and the near-term growth is coming from across the Russian border rather than from domestic long-haul demand.
The campaign was set out at the eighth Heilongjiang provincial tourism industry development conference in Jixi on July 8. Chinese state media ran a further promotional push on July 27, positioning the province’s forests, wetlands, grasslands and rivers as an escape from summer heat elsewhere in the country.
Heilongjiang’s ports handled about 655,000 inbound Russian travellers in the period reported to May, up 69.4% year on year, according to figures published by the State Council Information Office. Of those, 311,000 entered under the visa waiver, up 229.2%.
30-day-visa trial
China introduced a one-year trial of 30-day visa-free entry for Russian ordinary passport holders on September 15, 2025. Russia’s reciprocal measure for Chinese nationals took effect on December 1, 2025. Both run to September 14, 2026.
The border product is short-haul and high-frequency. Heihe sits across the Amur from Blagoveshchensk, a crossing of roughly 700 metres by ferry or hovercraft, and has drawn two-night shopping and wellness trips. Suifenhe has added Russian-language signage, cross-border payment options and car hire desks with Russian-language service and on-the-spot temporary licence issuance.
Operators report onward movement beyond the border belt. Russian visitors are using Heihe and Suifenhe as entry points before continuing to Harbin and, in some cases, to coastal cities including Dalian and Qingdao.
Heilongjiang shares a 2,981 km border with Russia and has forest cover of 46.8% across an area of 473,000 sq km.
Both governments are due to review traffic and security data before deciding whether to make the waiver permanent or extend it to further crossings when the pilot expires on September 14.
Why it matters for the trade
The date to diary is September 14. Every Russian-origin number coming out of Heilongjiang rests on a one-year pilot that has not yet been renewed. Operators quoting Heilongjiang product for the 2026/27 ice season are quoting into a policy gap, and contracts written now should carry a visa-regime clause rather than assume rollover.
The campaign was set out at the eighth Heilongjiang provincial tourism industry development conference in Jixi on July 8. Chinese state media ran a further promotional push on July 27, positioning the province’s forests, wetlands, grasslands and rivers as an escape from summer heat elsewhere in the country.
Heilongjiang’s ports handled about 655,000 inbound Russian travellers in the period reported to May, up 69.4% year on year, according to figures published by the State Council Information Office. Of those, 311,000 entered under the visa waiver, up 229.2%.