A foreign guest tries to use the "Meet China" Inbound Tourism Digital Consumption Screen in Yuyuan Garden, Shanghai, east China, Sept. 27, 2025. (Xinhua/Chen Haoming)
by Xinhua writers Li Kun, Song Rui and Ma Bowen
TIANJIN, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) -- Heatwaves sweeping across Europe this summer have made air conditioners a hot commodity. For many European consumers, however, the challenge was not only purchasing a cooling device, but also having it delivered and installed quickly.
Joybuy, the European online retail business of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, has addressed this demand by taking its integrated delivery-and-installation service to overseas markets.
Through its European logistics network, the company enables consumers in over 30 cities, including Paris and London, to receive same-day delivery and installation of air conditioners when orders are placed in the morning.
"Highly efficient" and "beyond expectations" are phrases frequently used by European consumers to describe the service.
By 2025, JD.com had established nearly 200 bonded warehouses, direct-mail warehouses and overseas warehouses across 25 countries and regions worldwide, according to Feng Lei, vice president of JD.com. In Europe alone, the company had built over 60 warehousing and delivery sites, supporting high-quality delivery services for overseas consumers.
Chinese services are increasingly gaining recognition worldwide. For many overseas visitors, China has become a destination not only for shopping, but also for experiencing innovative and personalized services, including autonomous driving, integrated bath and spa services, customized healthcare, intelligent robots and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) therapies.
Foreign trainees learn Baduanjin, a traditional breathing and stretching exercise, in Sanya, south China's Hainan Province, Aug. 7, 2025. (Xinhua/Guo Cheng)
According to the National Immigration Administration, China received 22.91 million inbound foreign visitors in the first half of 2026, up 20.4 percent year on year. Visa-free entries accounted for 77.7 percent of this total.
Da Ren Tang, a century-old TCM brand in north China's Tianjin Municipality, has launched a TCM-themed tourism program that offers overseas tourists various products, health consultations and wellness experiences.
The program features seasonal tea tasting, meridian massage sessions and herbal pill-making activities, helping visitors explore the connection between traditional culture and modern life.
To better serve international travelers, Umetrip, a Chinese aviation travel service platform, has launched HiChina, a one-stop travel service tool designed to help international visitors plan their trips in China.
The platform offers multilingual flight searches, online check-in, electronic boarding passes and real-time alerts. It also integrates practical functions including electronic arrival card application, English map navigation, NFC-enabled public transport payments, real-time translation and tax refund location searches.
By covering the entire travel process from arrival to departure, the platform aims to make traveling in China more convenient for international visitors.
"We use digital services to enhance the reputation of 'Chinese services,' helping unlock the potential of inbound consumption and increase the global influence of 'China Travel,'" said Liu Feng, vice president of Umetrip.
In March, China introduced a package of measures to boost travel service exports and expand inbound consumption. These initiatives include optimizing tax refund services for departing visitors, launching multilingual versions of lifestyle service applications, and further streamlining visa procedures to enhance foreign tourists' consumption experience in China.
Foreign residents in China have also witnessed firsthand the rapid upgrading of the country's service consumption.
Ivan Monich, a Russian teacher at Tianjin Foreign Studies University who has lived in China for many years, described the convenience brought by digital services as part of "the comfort of life in China."
In his view, mobile applications that combine navigation, real-time traffic information and ride-hailing services have made travel much easier. "Everything I need is right there in one app," Monich said.
Wang Yiming, former vice president of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that China's 15th five-year plan (2026-2030) for expanding consumption emphasizes "orderly relaxing control over market access in the service sector and optimizing the market access environment for new business forms and new sectors," creating favorable conditions for the development of China's service consumption.
Liu Xiaolong, global partner of U.S.-based management consulting firm Kearney Management Consultants, said that as China's service consumption continues to move toward higher quality and more experience-oriented offerings, the country will become an important market for global service enterprises.
China is also expected to provide new ideas and opportunities for the global service consumption sector through innovations in cultural intellectual property, consumption models and other areas, Liu said.
A single purchase
