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China's 240-hour visa-free transit

Last reviewed 22 October 2026

This is the one page on this site built entirely from the Chinese government's own English publication, dated 20 August 2026. It is also two months out of date relative to most English guides, which still say 55 countries. The current number is 57, and the 65 eligible ports and the stay areas are set out below in full.

What the 240-hour scheme actually requires

Source: National Immigration Administration (English), "Visa-Free Transit Policies", 20 August 2026 — en.nia.gov.cn The published conditions are narrow and worth reading precisely, because two of them are the kind of detail that ends a trip at the gate.

• You must hold an ordinary passport.
• You must hold an onward ticket with a confirmed seat and departure date, bound for a third country or region.
• You may enter through any of the 65 designated open exit-entry ports across 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities.
• You may stay in the permitted areas for no more than 10 days.
• During the stay you may do travel, business, visits and family reunions. Work, study and news reporting still require prior approval and an appropriate visa.

The Chinese-language version of the same rule adds the mechanics, and they are not in the English page: the traveler must fill in a temporary entry card for foreigners, must submit a valid passport or other international travel document valid for at least three months, and must accept inspection and questioning by the border inspection authority. The onward ticket must be for travel within 240 hours with the date and seat already fixed — and the Chinese text is explicit that without an onward interline ticket booked before entry, the temporary entry procedure cannot be completed.

There is also a limit on what you may do with the ticket. The transit scheme is for travellers whose country of departure and their destination are different. A ticket that starts and ends in the same country is not a transit.

The 57 countries

Source: National Immigration Administration (English), "Visa-Free Transit Policies", 20 August 2026 — en.nia.gov.cn The list as published in English:

Source: National Immigration Administration (Chinese), 3 November 2025, Announcement No. 4 of 2025, attachment 1 — nia.gov.cn The Chinese version of the same list groups the countries differently — the six Americas countries are one group there (United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Chile) and Mexico is not South America. The set of countries is the same. We are flagging it because a reader comparing the English and Chinese pages will notice the grouping and assume something is missing, and because the country count you are quoted in the two languages may be grouped differently in secondary coverage.

The 65 ports

Source: National Immigration Administration (Chinese), 3 November 2025, Announcement No. 4 of 2025, measure 6 — nia.gov.cn On 5 November 2025 five more ports were added to the 240-hour scheme, taking the total from 60 to 65: Guangzhou Pazhou Passenger Port, Hengqin, the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge, Zhongshan Port, and the Guangshen high-speed rail West Kowloon Station. In the same announcement the immigration administration extended the 24-hour direct transit measure to ten more airports, listed below. Guangming Online ran the same announcement as a news report the same day, and we archived that copy as well.

The full port list is long — airports, seaports, railway ports and road crossings across 24 province-level regions — and it changes at every expansion. Rather than print a snapshot that will be wrong by the next one, here is the shape of it, which is what actually helps when you are routing a trip:

• The Greater Bay Area is now the most connected part of the map, with Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macao Bridge, Hengqin, Zhongshan Port, Guangzhou Pazhou and West Kowloon all on the list. A Hong Kong arrival that used to mean a visa can now be a 10-day stay.
• Long-distance inland cities are included — Chengdu Shuangliu and Tianfu, Chongqing Jiangbei, Kunming Changshui, Guiyang Longdongbao, Xi'an Xianyang, and a rail port at Mohan on the China–Laos border.
• The western corridors are covered — Lanzhou, Dunhuang, Xining, Yinchuan, Ürümqi, Kashgar and a road port at Khorgos.
• Every major coastal arrival point from Dalian and Qingdao to Haikou, Sanya, Xiamen, Fuzhou, Ningbo and Zhoushan.

Where you are allowed to go once you are in

Source: Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Canada, "240-Hour Visa-Free Transit", 10 January 2025 — ca.china-embassy.gov.cn; and the same guidance from the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Denmark, 16 July 2025 — dk.china-embassy.org The stay is not limited to the airport. The permitted areas cover 24 province-level regions, and within them the rule is sometimes provincial and sometimes finer-grained. As published in January 2025, the limits were: Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, and Hebei's neighbours Shanxi (the cities of Taiyuan and Datong) and Liaoning; Heilongjiang (the city of Harbin); Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang; Anhui and Fujian; Jiangxi (the cities of Nanchang and Jingdezhen); Shandong, Henan, Hubei and Hunan; Guangdong, from which you may exit via any of the province's open exit-entry ports; Guangxi (twelve named cities including Nanning, Guilin and Beihai); Hainan; Chongqing; Sichuan (eleven named cities including Chengdu, Leshan and Luzhou); Guizhou; Yunnan (nine named cities and prefectures including Kunming, Dali, Lijiang and Xishuangbanna); and Shaanxi.

Source: National Immigration Administration (English), 20 August 2026 — en.nia.gov.cn The current English page states the permitted areas as 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The fine-grained sub-provincial list we quote above is from the January 2025 publication; the port list was expanded in November 2025 and we have not re-read a reissued stay-area table since. Treat the boundaries as the January 2025 text, and confirm before you plan a route out of province.

The 24-hour option, which almost nobody uses

Source: National Immigration Administration (English), "Visa-Free Transit Policies", 20 August 2026 — en.nia.gov.cn There is a second, older and much simpler scheme sitting underneath the 240-hour one, and it applies to nationals of every other country in the world — not just the 57. All open exit-entry ports in China implement it.

You may stay in China for no more than 24 hours without a visa, provided you hold valid international travel documents and an onward international flight, ship or train ticket with a confirmed seat, and you will not leave the restricted area of the port. If you do need to leave the designated restricted area, a temporary entry permit must be obtained first at the immigration inspection authority of the port concerned.

Source: National Immigration Administration (Chinese), 3 November 2025, Announcement No. 4 of 2025, measure 5 — nia.gov.cn Since 5 November 2025 the 24-hour direct transit measure has been extended to ten further international airports: Tianjin Binhai, Dalian Zhoushuizi, Nanjing Lukou, Fuzhou Changle, Qingdao Jiaodong, Wuhan Tianhe, Nanning Wuxu, Haikou Meilan, Chongqing Jiangbei and Kunming Changshui. The measure lets a passenger on a 24-hour international through-ticket connect at one of these airports without going through immigration formalities at all, provided they do not leave the airport.

The accommodation registration, and the arrival card

Two administrative requirements attach to any stay, and both catch visitors out because they are not on the visa page.

Source: Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Canada, "240-Hour Visa-Free Transit", 10 January 2025 — ca.china-embassy.gov.cn You must comply with Chinese law and register your accommodation. In a hotel, registration is handled under the hotel industry rules when you check in. If you are staying anywhere other than a hotel, you or your host must report it to the local police station within 24 hours of check-in. Exceeding your permitted time or area without a stay document, and failing to register your accommodation, are both published as grounds for enforcement.

Source: National Immigration Administration (Chinese), 3 November 2025, Announcement No. 4 of 2025, measure 10 — nia.gov.cn Since 20 November 2025 foreign nationals can fill in the arrival card online before travelling, through the immigration administration's government website, the government services platform, the 12367 app, the WeChat and Alipay mini-programmes, or by scanning a code on a phone. The form is at s.nia.gov.cn/ArrivalCardFillingPC/. Anyone without the ability to do it online can scan a code at the port and use an on-site device, or fill in a paper card. Seven groups are exempt from filling it in at all, including people transiting for 24 hours without leaving the port's restricted area, and cruise passengers who leave on the same ship they arrived on.

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