Starting from next month, the policy of tax refund for departure will be implemented in two new locations. According to the announcement released by the Ministry of Finance on June 16th, Dalian City and Hubei Province will implement the policy of tax refund for overseas tourists leaving the country after shopping in accordance with relevant regulations from July 1st, 2025. Currently, with the optimization and expansion of the departure tax rebate policy, the enthusiasm of overseas tourists for shopping in China is continuing to heat up, and the potential for inbound consumption is constantly being released. In the context of promoting consumption, developing inbound consumption has become an important lever to boost consumption. ”Liu Xiangdong, Deputy Director of the Economic Research Department of the China International Economic Exchange Center, stated in an interview with reporters that optimizing the departure tax rebate policy not only facilitates overseas tourists' shopping and enhances their shopping experience, but also directly drives the retail growth of goods and services, unleashing a consumption potential of billions of yuan. The attractiveness of international consumption continues to increase. In recent years, China has orderly expanded its opening up, and the visa free "circle of friends" has continued to expand. A series of entry facilitation policies have also improved the travel and shopping experience of overseas tourists in China. With the continuous promotion of high-level opening up to the outside world, "China tourism" and "China shopping" have become hot topics on social platforms, and inbound consumption continues to heat up. Taking the Dragon Boat Festival holiday as an example, according to the data of the People's Bank of China, this year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday (from May 31 to June 2), the number and amount of payment transactions processed by UnionPay and UnionPay for overseas visitors to China increased by 118.6% and 58.8% respectively compared with last year's Dragon Boat Festival holiday (from June 8 to 10, 2024). Hong Yong, a think tank expert at the China Digital Reality Integration 50 Forum, stated in an interview with reporters that the implementation of China's policy of expanding high-level opening-up has been effective, and the international influence of Chinese culture, as well as the convenience of payment and tourism services, have jointly promoted the growth of inbound consumption. Among them, measures such as optimizing the departure tax rebate policy have significantly reduced the consumption costs of overseas tourists, directly stimulating inbound tourism consumption. In April, the Ministry of Commerce and six other departments issued the "Notice on Further Optimizing the Exit Tax Refund Policy and Expanding Inbound Consumption" (hereinafter referred to as the "Notice"), which clearly promotes the incremental expansion of exit tax refund stores, enriches the supply of exit tax refund products, and improves the level of exit tax refund services. Specifically, the "Notice" proposes measures such as lowering the threshold for departure tax refunds and raising the cash tax refund limit to 20000 RMB, providing positive assistance in attracting overseas tourists to shop in China and stimulating the potential for inbound consumption. According to data from the State Administration of Taxation, in the first month of implementation of the policy measures in the "Notice" (April 27th to May 26th), the number of tax refund shops significantly increased and the amount of tax refunds significantly increased. The number of outbound tax refunds processed by tax departments nationwide increased by 116% year-on-year, and the sales of tax refund shops increased by 56% year-on-year; The pilot promotion of the "buy and refund" business has been carried out nationwide, with a 32 fold increase in the number of transactions and a 50 fold increase in sales compared to the same period last year; 1303 new departure tax refund stores have been added, and the number of departure tax refund stores nationwide has increased to 5196, which is 1.4 times that of the end of 2024. The optimized departure tax rebate policy not only increases the shopping frequency and single consumption amount of overseas tourists by reducing their shopping costs, but also covers more products with Chinese and local characteristics, providing overseas tourists with a wider range of choices when shopping, meeting the needs of different tourists, and enhancing their shopping willingness. ”Song Xiangqing, Vice President of the Chinese Society of Business Economics and founder of the Huade List, stated that optimizing the outbound tax rebate policy in conjunction with China's "visa free" policy for multiple countries has enhanced China's attractiveness to overseas tourists and further expanded the scale of inbound consumption. The "Special Action Plan for Boosting Consumption" issued by the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council in March proposes to develop inbound consumption. Currently, inbound consumption shows enormous growth potential. According to data from the Ministry of Commerce of China, the total expenditure of inbound tourists will reach 94.2 billion US dollars in 2024, an increase of 77.8%. The proportion of inbound consumption by overseas tourists to China's GDP is about 0.5%. Expanding inbound consumption will inject new impetus and expand new space to boost consumption. In Song Xiangqing's view, the optimization and expansion of the departure tax rebate policy not only helps to increase shopping consumption, but also drives the coordinated development of multiple related industries such as tourism, transportation, catering, and accommodation, and has a comprehensive driving effect on the domestic consumer market. While optimizing and expanding the exit tax rebate policy, various regions are also making efforts to enhance the attractiveness of international consumption and expand inbound consumption. As proposed in the "Implementation Rules for Building an International Consumer City with 'Enjoy Instant Purchase and Refund'" (draft for comments) released by the Hangzhou Municipal Bureau of Commerce on June 16, measures such as "offering a 25 yuan/person in store reward and a 25 yuan/person (transaction) consumption re reward to travel agencies that travel to departure tax refund stores for shopping and tourism," "offering a 1.5% increase in departure tax refund (excluding instant purchase and refund) sales and a 2% increase in 'instant purchase and refund' sales to enterprises with departure tax refund sales of more than 1 million yuan in 2025. Liu Xiangdong stated that the development of inbound consumption not only releases new consumption momentum, but also promotes the continuous upgrading of goods and services in China. To further enhance the effectiveness of policies related to inbound consumption, visa expansion and process simplification can be further promoted in the future, such as implementing the "one hour quick approval" mechanism for electronic visas, piloting mutual recognition between business visas and tourist visas, etc., covering more emerging customer markets. In the future, we can enrich the supply of characteristic tourism products and explore cooperation with more international payment systems to provide more payment options and further optimize the shopping experience for overseas tourists. ”Hong Yong suggested. (New Society)