On May 25, Guangdong launched eight measures to promote inbound shopping, aiming to enhance the shopping experience for inbound tourists.

These measures include increasing the number of tax refund shops, promoting departure tax refund policies, accelerating the construction of duty-free shops within cities, encouraging cruise and yacht economy consumption, supporting targeted renovations of commercial streets, promoting trendy domestic products, optimizing entry permit processing, and improving payment convenience for inbound consumers.

Enhancing shopping experience

Guangdong aims to improve the shopping experience for inbound tourists by optimizing payment, tax refund, and service processes.

Currently, 40 provincial characteristic commercial streets and 22 port duty-free shops in Guangdong offer foreign card acceptance, international signage, multilingual guides, and other services. Some even have dedicated foreign service centers. These measures are expected to enhance payment convenience and international services.

Guangdong's manufacturing industry is well-developed, and its high-quality products, such as high-end consumer electronics, artificial intelligence (AI), and well-known brands like Huawei, DJI, and BYD, are popular worldwide. The new policies will further reinforce Guangdong's reputation as a quality consumption destination and promote its products globally.

Creating new growth points

The new policies will support the development of consumption scenarios such as tax refund shops, duty-free shops within cities, and cruises and yachts, where Guangdong has a strong foundation.

Currently, Guangdong has 791 tax-free shops, and the registration requirements for tax-free shops have been relaxed. The tax refund threshold has been reduced from 500 yuan to 200 yuan, and the cash refund limit has been raised from 10,000 yuan to 20,000 yuan. The first tax-free shops in the downtown areas of Guangzhou and Shenzhen are under construction. These policies are expected to foster new growth points for inbound consumption and effectively convert consumers’ attention into sales volume.