Visa Free Travel to Russia and China for Americans?

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Contrarian Expatriate
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Joined: December 2nd, 2009, 9:57 pm

Visa Free Travel to Russia and China for Americans?

Post by Contrarian Expatriate »

Today I was applying for a Global Entry membership which is a trusted traveler program in the United States. I was shocked that the application process permits Americans to also apply for a APEC Business Traveler Card with gives visa free travel access to all Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation member countries. The US is only a transitional member of APEC but it does participate in the card program. These are the APEC countries:

Australia
Brunei Darussalam
Canada
Chile
People's Republic of China *
Hong Kong, China
Indonesia
Japan
Republic of Korea
Malaysia
Mexico
New Zealand
Papua New Guinea
Peru
The Philippines
Russia *
Singapore
Taiwan
Thailand
The United States
Vietnam *

* I applied for the card and hope to travel to Russia and China visa-free for up to 3 months at a time, but there is conflicting information in Wikipedia and elsewhere indicating that Americans still have to apply for visas to China, Russia, and Vietnam. The travel must be for business travel or investment activity, but not for employment. My day-trading and local bank research satisfies that requirement.

Here is basis information on the card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APEC_Business_Travel_Card
Here is the official website for the card: http://travel.apec.org/

Do any Americans here have experience traveling with this card especially to Russia, China, and Vietnam? It seems almost too good to be true that travel would be visa free and if it is, it perplexes me that this card is so unknown. In the coming weeks, I might have to inquire directly with the Russian and Chinese Consulates to the the actual story straight from the horses mouth.

The US will stop issuing new cards in September 2018 (but already issued cards will still be usable until expiration) unless new legislation is passed to extend the issuance program. There is sponsored legislation to that effect pending as of this writing.
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