4 visa-free ways to travel to China by land, sea and air for 72 hours and up to 30 days

Airports within the likes of Beijing, Shanghai, Xian, Chengdu, Chongqing, Guilin, Kunming, Qingdao, Shenyang, Wuhan, Xiamen, Guangdong province and the Shanghai-Jiangsu-Zhejiang cluster can course of visa-free arrivals for transit passengers for 72 to 144 hours.

Travellers should keep throughout the designated metropolis or surrounding provinces for the complete transit interval.

There isn’t a cost and no utility to fill out earlier than journey, or on arrival.

Passengers should, nonetheless, show to the airline earlier than boarding and once more to immigration authorities after arriving that they’ve a ticket to go away town or province – often by air -to a spot outdoors mainland China the place they didn’t begin their journey.

The journey time of the outbound ticket should fall throughout the 72 or 144-hour window.

Spherical-trip tickets are usually not allowed as they don’t not qualify as “transit”.

Foreign tourism in China struggles to hit pre-pandemic levels

Below the rules, the 72 or 144 hours technically begins from the primary full calendar day after an arrival.

A passenger might attain Shanghai visa free from Singapore, for instance, after which proceed to Tokyo – or fly from the particular administrative area of Macau to Xiamen and onwards to Taipei.

Transit visa waivers started a decade in the past to stimulate tourism spending and attendance at occasions equivalent to commerce exhibits, though these visa-free stays place no particular limits on what travellers can do in China.

2. Hainan province (30 days)

This tropical island province of Hanian permits nationals from 59 international locations to enter visa free and freed from cost.

Guests solely must buy a round-trip flight to the province’s two principal gateways of Sanya or Haikou and fill out an arrival type on the aircraft.

The province as soon as required visa-free guests to arrange their journeys by Hainan-based journey businesses, nevertheless it has formally scrapped the requirement, based on an immigration agent within the provincial capital of Haikou.

Hainan kicked off visa-free journey in 2018 to stimulate tourism.

Travellers below this scheme, although, are usually not allowed to go to different components of China throughout the 30 days until they’ve a visa.

3. Tour group from Hong Kong or Macau to Guangdong province (6 days)

Residents of any nation that has diplomatic ties with China can be part of tour teams organized by businesses based mostly in Hong Kong or Macau to enter particular cities within the neighbouring Guangdong province.

Teams might enter Guangdong by land, sea or air, for 144 hours, with dozens of bus, rail and ferry routes connecting the province with Hong Kong.

To qualify, a tour group will need to have no less than two individuals who enter and exit similtaneously organized by the company.

9 Pearl River Delta cities of Dongguan, Foshan, Guangzhou, Huizhou, Jiangmen, Shenzhen, Zhaoqing, Zhongshan and Zhuhai are included, whereas the identical visa-free scheme applies to Shantou, a coastal metropolis positioned east of the delta.

Individually, residents of the ten Affiliation of Southeast Asian Nations international locations might be part of tour teams of no less than two folks to go to town of Guilin in China’s southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous area visa free for 144 hours.

4. Arrive by cruise ship (15 days)

Tour teams of no less than two individuals who attain China by way of the Shanghai Wusongkou Worldwide Cruise Terminal might keep onshore for as much as 15 days with out visas.

Below the rules, the journey company have to be registered in mainland China and the entire tour group should enter and exit China on the identical time.

Through the 15 days, guests might go to Beijing and any a part of China’s shoreline with seaports, from Liaoning province within the north by to the southern island province of Hainan, in addition to the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous area that borders Vietnam within the south.