From Visa-Free Travel to Pharmacies: russia’s Inferiority Complex Toward China

The kremlin continues to demonstrate exemplary loyalty to Beijing, willing to go as far as its partner desires. However, despite all of moscow’s efforts, China is showing restrained indifference. The latest gesture toward the East was putin’s recent statement expressing readiness to make the visa-free regime for Chinese citizens permanent, provided Beijing deems it “feasible and beneficial”. Previously, the two sides had already introduced a 30-day visa-free entry period, with the term extended through the end of 2027. moscow is seeking to make this concession permanent in order to at least somehow attract foreign visitors to the country, as the total number of incoming tourists in the first half of the year fell by nearly 20%, while Beijing accounted for more than half of all tourists to the rf.

At the local level, efforts to curry favor with China have reached almost comical proportions. In the perm territory, hotels and restaurants are flooding in with applications for “China Friendly” certification: staff are required to use smartphones with translation apps, create dual-language websites, and install ATMs that accept China UnionPay cards. In amur region, they’ve gone even further, opening the first pharmacies fully tailored to Chinese customers, where absolutely everything has been translated – from signs and medication categories to the point-of-sale software.

However, even this adaptation of the service to Chinese consumers did not yield the desired result. russian tour operators had pinned great hopes on the removal of visa barriers, but the actual flow of tourists from China lags significantly behind the industry’s optimistic forecasts.

The result is a telling picture: moscow is doing its best to deepen its inferiority complex by translating pharmacy signs and offering lifetime visa-free travel, while for Chinese tourists, russia remains a too dreary, uncomfortable, and uncompetitive destination. russia has still not managed to attract a massive influx of money from the PRC.