The 7.4x Visa Fee Hike Nobody Is Talking About

The Temperature Gap in the Name of Reciprocity: Structural Tensions Behind the China-Japan Visa Fee Adjustments

On September 14, 2026, the fee schedule at the visa window of the Chinese Embassy in Japan changed. Single-entry visas jumped from 2,250 yen to 16,750 yen. Double-entry visas rose from 3,750 yen to 25,100 yen. Six-month multiple-entry visas went from 4,500 yen to 33,500 yen. One-year multiple-entry visas went from 7,500 yen to 50,250 yen. The increase was about 7.4 times. Applications already accepted before September 14 were charged at the old rates. Visas for third-country nationals remained unchanged.

At a regular press conference on September 11, Mao Ning, spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, was asked about the matter. Her answer was one sentence: “This adjustment was made according to the principle of reciprocity.”

Japan Moved First

Rewind three months. On June 19, 2026, the Japanese government decided at a cabinet meeting that, starting July 1, fees for foreign visitor visas to Japan would be raised to five times their previous level. Single-entry visas rose from about 3,000 yen to about 15,000 yen. Multiple-entry visas rose from 6,000 yen to 30,000 yen. This was Japan’s first visa fee increase since 1978. Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi gave the reason as “responding to rising prices and exchange-rate fluctuations.”

Of the more than 7.86 million visas Japan issued in 2025, 5.71 million went to travelers from mainland China, about 73 percent of the total. More than 70 percent of the cost of Japan’s fee increase falls on Chinese applicants.

China’s response corresponded in form and scale. You raised fees fivefold; we raised ours roughly sevenfold. You took effect on July 1; we take effect on September 14. Reciprocity is nothing new in international relations. It is a kind of discipline: if you are the first to break the balance, I respond in kind.

Visa-Free Entry Remains, So the Increase Cannot Yet Reach Most People

If one looks only at the visa fee numbers, it is easy to conclude that the cost of visiting China has soared. But one policy is running in parallel: China’s unilateral 30-day visa-free policy for Japanese ordinary passport holders, valid until December 31, 2026. Japanese citizens traveling for tourism, business, visiting relatives and friends, exchange visits, or transit, and staying no more than 30 days, do not need to apply for a visa and therefore incur no visa fee.

The result is a structural mismatch. Visa fees have risen sevenfold, but the vast majority of short-term visitors to China will not feel it. Those who pay are Japanese citizens who need to stay in China for more than 30 days: expatriate employees of Japanese companies, students, resident journalists, and those who, for work or family reasons, need to enter and exit frequently and stay more than 30 days at a time.

According to data from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dated October 1, 2025, the number of Japanese staying long-term in China was 92,928. This was down about 4,600 from the previous year, a decline of nearly 5 percent, and the 13th consecutive year of decline. Japanese companies have become more cautious about dispatching expatriate employees, and fewer family members accompany them. These are the main reasons for the continued decline. After news emerged that two Japanese employees of Fuji Electric had been detained in Dalian, a Japanese corporate executive said explicitly that “we have to consider measures such as reducing business trips to China.” The visa fee increase, layered onto this downward curve, is another layer of friction cost. It is not the starting point of the trend.

Routes Are Shrinking, a More Fundamental Problem of Access

Visa fees affect the threshold; routes affect the channel. The latter has changed far more dramatically.

Flight Master data show that in August 2026, all 18 China-Japan routes were canceled. From mainland China to Japan, 1,120 flights were canceled, a cancellation rate of more than 30 percent. In June as a whole, 1,488 flights from mainland China to Japan were canceled, a cancellation rate of 37.5 percent. In March, during cherry blossom season, 53 China-Japan routes were suspended for the entire month. To Japan, 2,691 flights were canceled, a cancellation rate of nearly 50 percent. In the summer of 2026 (March 29 to October 24), only 597 weekly passenger flights were scheduled on China-Japan routes, down 53 percent from 1,279.5 in the same period last year.

Trunk routes from Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to Tokyo and Osaka remain. What has been widely canceled are direct routes from second- and third-tier cities. Airlines are cutting routes for commercial reasons; the government has not suspended flights. Average route load factors have fallen to 40 to 48 percent. The airline industry’s break-even threshold is around 70 percent. When a route loses money on every flight for a long time, cutting it is what any market participant would do.

Behind the commercial choice is a systemic decline in demand. The number of Chinese tourists to Japan has fallen for six consecutive months. Japanese tourists’ willingness to visit China is also affected by multiple factors: the tense atmosphere in political relations, changes in perceptions of safety, and the inconvenience caused by fewer routes. Together, they form a self-reinforcing negative cycle.

Year-End Is the Decisive Date

Pulling all the threads together, one date emerges: December 31, 2026.

This is the expiration date of China’s unilateral visa-free policy for Japan. If the policy is not extended by then, the impact of the visa fee adjustment will expand from affecting only about 90,000 long-term residents to millions of short-term visitors to China each year. Yonhap pointed this out directly in its report: “If the visa-free measure expires on December 31 this year and is not extended, the impact of the visa fee increase on Japanese people will be even greater.”

The impact of this round of reciprocal visa fee adjustments appears mild only because the visa-free policy acts as a buffer. Once the buffer is removed, the cost of a single-entry visa to China will go from zero to 16,750 yen. For short-term visitors traveling for tourism or business, this is a psychological threshold that goes from nothing to something.

In announcing the visa fee adjustment, China did not touch the visa-free policy. The two operate at different levels of policy logic. The visa fee adjustment is a diplomatic move of reciprocal countermeasure. The visa-free policy is a unilateral facilitation arrangement. The former needs to respond to Japan’s fee increase; the latter is based on China’s own judgment. Confusing the two would misread the policy signal.

The Underlying Asymmetry

Back to the starting point. Japan has implemented visa-free entry for 74 countries and regions worldwide. People from more than 120 countries, including China, still need visas to visit Japan. China, by contrast, unilaterally grants Japanese citizens 30-day visa-free treatment. This asymmetry is historically formed and reflects the current state of bilateral relations.

The visa fee adjustment says this: China is willing to show goodwill in facilitating people-to-people exchanges, but that goodwill is not unconditional. When the other side adjusts the rules first, China will respond with equal force.

What matters more than the size of the fee increase is that three curves are converging: the approaching expiration of the visa-free policy, the continued contraction of China-Japan routes, and the year-by-year decline in the number of Japanese in China. The visa fee adjustment is only one facet of this larger problem, but with concrete numbers and clear logic, it provides an entry point for observing structural changes in China-Japan relations.