LAHORE – China has opened up its first visa application service center in the Punjab capital city to facilitate applicants wishing to visit the Asian country.
Yao Jing, the Chinese Ambassador to Islamabad, inaugurated the center on Monday morning. China’s Consul General in Lahore Long Dingbin, Deputy Consul General Peng Zhengwu and officials from the Punjab government also attended the ceremony.
The new visa center will provide enormous relief to businessmen and visitors, who earlier had to travel to Islamabad to apply for a visa to China.
The visa center in Lahore will handle ordinary visa applications to China, to the special administrative region of Hong Kong and Macao. However, the final approval will still be granted by the Chinese embassy in Islamabad. The Lahore office will only collect the needful documents and forward the requests.
According to China’s Deputy Consul General, the Chinese embassy “will not operate the visa center in Lahore directly” as it has outsourced it to a private company.
