Really? My visa is probably expired now but I remember my Chinese visa being sort of a headache to deal with 10 years back from the US. Certainly a couple different visas to there weren't "visa-free."
https://www.visaforchina.cn/DEL3_EN/tongzhigonggao/327343163...
And to be clear, this is not the previous restricted "X hours transit, don't leave the city" thing, but a full blown 30 day entry permit valid for the entire country (minus Tibet), any port of entry, any port of departure.
Yes, this is a massive departure from their previous policy, but yes, it's real. Having also gone through the regular China visa process multiple times in the past, I could hardly believe it myself when I used it earlier this year.
Whoa, Canada and the UK aren't western now? When did that happen?
Until I tried to travel back a few years later and they didn't let me board the plane because they had changed to an e-visa scheme called eTA.
My own fault for not checking, but, in fairness, I didn't expect the agreements between Canada and the UK to have materially changed.
If anything, dealing with WeChat and AliPay is much more of a headache.
I got one recently and it's not bad, except that it needs to be done in-person at an embassy based on the state you live in, so there's a 90% chance you'll have to trust a third party business next door to the embassy to walk your documents over and mail them back to you after. I would much rather be visa-free though, it was expensive and time consuming for no real reason.