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.
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.
Whoa, Canada and the UK aren't western now? When did that happen?
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.