Speaker: Associate Professor Hu Yushan (School of Economics, Renmin University of China)

Host: Professor Ma Xiangjun (China Institute of Economics, Liaoning University)

Guest Introduction: Professor Yu Miaojie (President of Liaoning University)

Time: November 12, 2026 (Thursday) 16:00 (Beijing Time)

Venue: Meeting Room 401, Administration Building, Puhe Campus

Language: Chinese

Abstract:

Grounded in China's localized practice of institutional opening-up, this paper breaks through the traditional Western analytical paradigm of reciprocal opening. Taking the unilateral visa-free policy as a quasi-natural experiment and drawing on daily national micro-level sample survey data on foreign inbound tourists' spending from 2023 to 2025, it constructs a time discontinuity regression model to systematically examine how unilateral opening, by dismantling institutional barriers to cross-border mobility, reshapes inbound consumption behavior and, through culture-tourism integration, achieves the two-way empowerment of both the expansion and quality upgrading of trade in services and the spatial spillover of Chinese culture. The findings are as follows: First, the unilateral visa-free policy raises average per-capita inbound consumption by 3,334.3 yuan, an increase of approximately 63.4%, extends the average length of stay by about 20.5%, and raises the share of independent travel by about 32.0 percentage points. Second, the policy dividends are not released universally but are concentrated in empowering high-value-added cultural experience service products, with the quality and efficiency gains being more pronounced for groups facing high visa barriers and with high consumption budgets. Third, the lower the cultural proximity to neighboring countries, the stronger the complementarity between Chinese and foreign cultural tourism products, and the more significant the spatial spillover dividends of unilateral opening—revealing a nonlinear mechanism whereby cultural heterogeneity inversely empowers the incremental development of trade in services. This paper provides micro-level empirical evidence that asymmetric unilateral opening promotes the expansion and quality upgrading of inbound consumption, revises the applicable boundaries of Western symmetric opening theory, and offers policy implications for optimizing higher-standard institutional opening-up, unleashing the potential of trade in services as an engine of economic growth, and enhancing mutual learning among Chinese and foreign civilizations.

Speaker Profile:

Hu Yushan is an Associate Professor in the Department of International Economics at the School of Economics, Renmin University of China, and Vice Director of the China Institute of Economic Reform and Development at Renmin University of China. She has published more than 20 papers in domestic and international journals, including Economic Research Journal, Management World, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Rural Studies, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Economic Inquiry, and World Economy. She has led multiple research projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Fund of the Ministry of Education, and has published two monographs. Her think-tank outputs have been adopted multiple times by the State Council General Office and the General Office of the CPC Central Committee, and have been selected for the Achievement Report of the National Office for Philosophy and Social Sciences. She has received multiple instructions from central and provincial/ministerial-level leaders, and her work has been forwarded to relevant departments for review and handling.