Do you even need a visa for China? The 30-day and 240-hour rules, explained.
About 50 countries can now visit China for 30 days without a visa, and 57 can stop over for 10. Yours is probably one of them.
The rules changed. A lot.
A few years ago, visiting China meant an embassy appointment, a long form, a hotel booking and weeks of waiting.
Today, a lot of people just get on the plane. Between 2024 and 2026 China opened visa-free entry to dozens of countries and stretched its transit rule from three days to ten. Plenty of advice online still describes the old system.
Here's the current picture, checked in November 2026. Visa rules change with little warning, so check your country's Chinese embassy site, or call China's immigration hotline on +86 12367, before you book.
Rule 1: 30 days visa-free
Citizens of about 50 countries can enter China without a visa for up to 30 days. That includes almost every EU country, plus the UK and Canada (since February 2026), Switzerland, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea, among others.
- Good for: tourism, business meetings, visiting family and friends, exchanges and transit.
- Not good for: working, studying or journalism. Those need a visa.
- Valid until: for most countries, 31 December 2026. It's been extended before; check before booking a 2027 trip.
No visa application and no fee. Just your passport, plus the free online arrival card before you fly.
The United States is not on this list. Americans either get a visa or use rule 2.
Rule 2: up to 10 days visa-free in transit
The 240-hour visa-free transit rule covers citizens of 57 countries, including the US. You can stay up to 10 days without a visa if you're passing through China on the way to somewhere else.
How it works:
- Your trip must go A → China → B, where B is a different country from A. New York → Shanghai → Tokyo works. New York → Shanghai → New York doesn't. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan count as separate places, so New York → Beijing → Hong Kong works.
- Have a confirmed onward ticket leaving within 10 days, with a date and a seat.
- Tell the airline at check-in you're using visa-free transit, and show the onward ticket. Not every check-in agent knows the rule.
- Enter through an approved port. There are 65, in 24 provinces, including the main airports in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Hangzhou and Xi'an.
- The clock starts at midnight after the day you land. Land on Monday afternoon, and your 240 hours start at 00:00 on Tuesday.
You can travel between the approved areas during your stay, so landing in Shanghai and taking the train to Beijing is fine. Going outside the approved areas counts as an illegal stay, so check the map if you plan side trips.
Overstaying is expensive
Leave on time. Overstaying can bring a warning, or in serious cases a fine of 500 RMB a day, up to 10,000 RMB, or detention, plus trouble getting into China again.
If neither rule fits
You need a visa: usually an L (tourist) or M (business) visa, applied for from home. In many countries you apply through the Chinese Visa Application Service Center rather than the embassy itself.
Americans are often given a 10-year multiple-entry visa for the same fee as a single entry, currently around US$140 under a fee reduction that runs to the end of 2026. Check the embassy's fee table. The validity is up to the visa officer, so ten years is common but not guaranteed.
This is a short excerpt from the Survive in China guide. Chapter 05 covers every visa type, the residence permit for people moving to China, the 24-hour police registration nobody tells you about, and what to do if you're about to overstay.
Want the deeper version? Same author, 240 pages of it.
See the guide →