On Wed, 25 May 2016, John C Klensin wrote: > > Ole, > > Since we seem to be waxing philosophical here, three complementary > rhetorical questions: > > (1) The easiest place for Chinese citizens to attend a meeting, with > a guarantee of no visa problems, is (obviously) China. A corollary > to our question above is that we should be holding additional > meetings in China (some "somewhere in Asia that might be relatively > friendly to Chinese passport holders"). How would you balance that > reason for planning more meetings in China against the disadvantages > of doing so, disadvantages that include uncertainty about visas for > others (see below), air quality issues, questions about availability > of open networks (at least for attendees staying in other than the > official hotel and possibly for the general population), etc.? > Note that inverting that question turns into exactly your question > above about very large numbers of US and Canadian attendees versus > visa issues. > As you know, last time we went to China it was only after a long debate, and as such I would expect us to have a similar debate if it happened again for all the reasons you list. Since all of those issues (including in-bound visas) affect every non-local attendee, I would expect the community to come to a go or no-go decision based in part by the perceived number of people negatively affected. I don't have any comments on your other points. Ole > > john > > > [1] "Unpleasant" including high fees, requirements to schedule > f2f interviews, long lead times, general discourtesy, demands > for unreasonable levels of documentation, and general "you need > to prove your innocence beyond any plausible doubt" behavior. > > [2] For the record, I've been timed out on an application for a > Chinese visa after getting several of them before and after. I > have every reason to believe that the main reasons was someone's > (or some institution's) idea of reciprocity. But timeouts for > US passport-holders trying to go to China are not a theoretical > issue (fwiw, I've also been timed out by Brazil -- nothing > unique about China or the US-China relationship). > > >