A tourist takes a 'selfie' in front of the Sydney Opera House (AFP / William West)

'Chinese tourist invasion'? Australia has not allocated 200 million visas for Chinese citizens

  • This article is more than one year old.
  • Published on January 24, 2020 at 06:00
  • 1 min read
  • By AFP Australia
A post has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook claiming that 200 million Australian visas allowing 10-year stays have been allocated for Chinese citizens. The claim is false; visas for Chinese visitors generally only allow three-month stays and the Australian government confirmed that no such allocation was ever implemented.

The Facebook post was published here on January 17, 2020. 

The post reads: “NOW WATCH THE BIG CHINESE TOURIST INVASION BEGIN. 200 MILLION CHINESE VISA's ALLOCATED FOR AUSTRALIA ALLOWING A 10 YEAR STAY.”

Below is a screenshot of the post:

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The claim is false.

Australia's Department of Home Affairs told AFP via email on January 23, 2020 that “there is no such allocation of 200 million visas".

According to the Australian Embassy in Beijing, Chinese citizens can obtain a visa through the “visitor visa (subclass 600) program,” which generally allows only three-month stays.

Frequent Chinese visitors to Australian can apply for the program’s Frequent Traveller stream, which grants visas that are valid for 10 years but also limits each entry to a maximum three-month stay.

According to the Department of Home Affairs website, the frequent traveller visa is for citizens of the People's Republic of China “who travel often to Australia for business or personal reasons.” 

Between July 2018 to June 2019, there were 1.43 million Chinese visitors to Australia and is the "largest source country of short-term visitor arrivals", according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). 

Below is a screenshot of an ABS chart showing the number of short-term visitors to Australia in the last decade from the top 5 source countries:

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