Thread: Chinese govt uses tourist's Visa to buy his plane ticket

According to Reuters on the opening day of the Olympics - Aug 8th - international tourists in Beijing spent $10M on their Visa credit and debit cards. Half of all Visa charges there were people from the United States, Japan, Hong Kong, the UK, and South Korea.

As if the Chinese weren't big enough Nazis, the Chinese government used a Canadian activist Steven Andersen's Visa card to buy him a plane ticket back home. The government shipped him back because of his pro-Tibet rallying in Beijing. The Chinese detained him, removed his wallet, and then went and bought his ticket unknowingly. They then took him to the airport and put him on the plane. He didn't find out he had paid for the ticket until after he got home. Visa will refund the charges since they were fraudulent.

I will never go to China after hearing this. How is it that in 2008 the second most powerful nation in the world can do this not only to their citizens but also tourists who are visiting for the Olympics?

I'll never go to China I don't agree with things like THIS, their human rights, etc. If China wants to grow up and start treating people right, then they could be even more successful.....to bad they'd rather stick to their communistic ways.

you've never been to asia or se asia then. there are different rules over there and our culture cannot possibly apply. It's a different system where you do not have freedom of speech. Having said that, SE Asia where there is no freedom of speech has more freedoms than the US in many ways.

Don't knock it 'till you've BEEN there.

This is an old story but I think this has gotten distorted somehow.

When a person flies to a foreign country, regardless of their citizenship and teh countries involved, the transportation company transporting them is responsible for removing them from the country if they are denied entrance. That is why your airline checks your passport and visa before you leave home when you fly internationally. If there is something wrong and you are denied entrance THEY must fly you back out of the country, either back home or to a nation that agrees to accept you. You can be sure that they will charge your credit card if they possibly can...and it will be for full fare.

It sounds like what happened here is that the Chinese denied this guy entry (their right) and then he was charegd his return fare (again, totally normal). It does not matter if the Chinese government charged him or if the airline did. It could be that in the hectic mess of the Olympics, his situation fell through the cracks and it really was teh Chinese that charged him. But if things had gone normally he still would have paid.

The Chinese government may indeed be evil, but this is a totally normal situation that happens every day. I have personally seen people denied entrance when I was traveling. It is more common than you think and the airlines definitely don't want to lose money because of it so they will charge you.