Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province will begin offering 144-hour visa-free transit services to foreign travelers starting Dec 1, 2019, a government press conference said.

The visa-free transit policy was approved by the State Council and will apply to citizens of 53 countries, including Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Russia, the United States, Brazil, Japan and Qatar.

Ningbo will be the fourth city in the Yangtze River Delta region to implement the visa policy for foreign visitors following Shanghai, Nanjing and Hangzhou.

Eligible travellers will be able to enjoy the policy when they enter from one of the border ports in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang-Shanghai region and exit from a different one.

The Ningbo government has taken measures to ensure the policy's smooth implementation and use it as a means to grow the tourism and aviation sectors.

At Ningbo Lishe International Airport, a 144-hour transit visa-free policy information desk and a special transit inspection channel have been set up to offer better services for international visitors.

In addition to Ningbo, other newly added border ports which qualify for the policy include Chongqing municipality in southwest China and Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi province, increasing the total number of participating ports to 27.

Official data from the National Immigration Administration shows that from January 2013 to September this year, more than 452,000 foreigners traveled through China under the visa-free policy. The number reached 100,000 in 2018, up 24 percent year on year.