Long queues at Friendship Pass, festival lights in Dongxing and day‑trip buses rolling toward Nanning sketch the same picture across Guangxi's borderlands: cross‑border tourism between China and Vietnam is surging as the Lunar New Year approaches. Border checkpoints from Pingxiang to Jingxi report busy but orderly flows, with Vietnamese families arriving for holiday markets, food and fireworks and Chinese visitors making short forays into northern Vietnam.
Vietnamese tourists like Du and Ruan — who planned to browse border towns before catching a high‑speed train from Nanning to Guangzhou to sample hotpot and roast duck — are emblematic of the mixed leisure and family‑visit demand driving the uptick. Travel agents on both sides say bookings have risen sharply for short, cross‑border itineraries; one Guangxi operator expects to handle more than 10,000 cross‑border visitors over the Spring Festival, up from roughly 6,000 last year.
Official data underline the scale of the rebound. In 2025 some 13.18 million passenger movements passed through Guangxi ports to and from Vietnam, a 16.7% year‑on‑year increase, while cross‑border transport trips surged nearly 40%. Local border control authorities attribute faster processing to deeper cooperation on customs, incremental easing of entry rules and targeted service improvements for events, reunions and sporting fixtures.
Border cities are leaning into the momentum. Dongxing, opposite Mong Cai, has staged a ‘Celebrate the New Year at the Border’ programme that pairs fireworks and lantern festivals with a cross‑border football friendly to keep Vietnamese visitors in town for longer stays. Travel operators report daily peaks of several hundred Vietnamese arrivals and say family groups are opting to experience China’s New Year atmosphere rather than travel farther afield.
The immediate economic dividend is clear: restaurants, hotels and transport operators in frontier counties get a seasonal lift at a time when Beijing prioritises domestic consumption and regional connectivity. But the phenomenon also carries political and operational significance: sustained, well‑managed people‑to‑people exchange strengthens bilateral ties at a local level, while requiring robust customs coordination and public‑health vigilance as traffic grows.
For international observers, the revival of China–Vietnam cross‑border tourism offers a practical barometer of post‑pandemic regional normalization. It highlights how incremental policy liberalisation and targeted local programming can quickly translate into traffic and revenues, and it underscores the strategic value both governments place on connectivity with neighbouring ASEAN states.