Last month, the Beijing Public Security Bureau announced that as of May 28, it was lifting, within the urban center of Beijing, the long-standing regulation barring foreigners from living in certain hotels. By October 1 the ban will be lifted in the rest of Beijing municipality, putting an end to a practice that has segregated foreign visitors and Chinese for over half a century. These dates will go down as great days in the story of China's opening to the outside world. As an American who first visited China in 1984 and who has lived in Beijing for nearly six years, I salute this admirable reform.

　　The segregation of hotels into those which could accept foreign guests and those which could accept only Chinese long offended foreigners and Chinese alike and created a barrier to cross-cultural understanding. Nominally established to ensure the security of foreign visitors, this system was a constant reminder of the double standard for treatment of foreign and Chinese people. The dual pricing system -- which greatly disadvantaged foreigners who purchased airplane and train tickets and entry into major tourist sites, among other things -- was another painful manifestation of this double standard, one that happily is also largely①a thing of the past owing to recent reforms.

　　The segregation of hotels into "foreign" and "Chinese", apart from being highly discriminatory and offensive (however well-intended),was also misguided. Not every foreign guest, after all, had enough money to pay for rooms at the vastly more expensive three-, four-, and five-star hotels where they were generally forced to stay. I remember a time, in 1991, when I traveled to Shanghai with another foreigner. We were both students and had little money. There was a clean, pleasant and inexpensive hotel in the city's center that seemed perfectly suited to our needs. We checked the price and were delighted to learn that the hotel charged the equivalent of only a night. Much to our disappointment and frustration, however, the receptionist told us that the hotel was "for Chinese only"; it was not authorized to accept guests from abroad. We ended up having to stay at a much more expensive hotel farther away from the part of Shanghai where we wanted to stay, and we had to cut short our time in the city for financial reasons. This was when the drawbacks in this system really hit home.

　　It occurred to me that many of the foreigners who sought to stay in inexpensive "Chinese" hotels such as the one that had rejected us were individual travelers, students, researchers and others who were by no means "rich". And what about travelers coming to China from countries less developed than China? This segregation cost foreign travelers, many of them(like myself) far from well-off, countless millions of dollars in lodging costs that need not have been so high.

　　But there were much greater costs. Many travelers, embittered by encounters with this flagrant discrimination, left China with impressions that were not as favorable as they might have been. It is impossible to estimate the toll this regulation took on China's international image. And it is also hard to reckon the cost it exacted on foreign understanding of China and Chinese understanding of the outside world. Chinese leaders have wisely noted that the best way to learn about the outside world is to engage with it; this principle lies at the very heart of China's policy of reform and opening up and it has served this country well over the last two decades. Yet the hotel policy created a major barrier to mutual understanding. Foreigners eager for the opportunity to live in primarily Chinese environments and talk to average Chinese people, thereby learning about Chinese culture and society firsthand, were instead "quarantined" in large, impersonal hotels where the only Chinese they saw were hotel employees. Clearly, staying at this type of hotel did little to help foreigners grasp the reality of Chinese life. After all, a five-star hotel in Beijing or Shanghai differs very little from a five-star hotel in Washington or New York.

　　The Beijing Public Security Bureau's decision to abolish this unfair system is a very wise one. It represents a giant step for Beijing in the direction of greater openness and fairness, and one that will go a long way toward increasing good will and understanding between the millions of foreigners who come to the Chinese capital every year and the warm-hearted people of this great city.

　　NOTE: This article reflects the personal view of the author.