China visa and entry rules for tourists

China has made itself dramatically easier to enter over the past few years, but the rules are unusually volatile: most visa-free schemes are written with explicit expiry dates, and several of the ones currently in force lapse at the end of 2026. This page summarises the position as we understand it, states the dates, and tells you where to confirm your own case.

Treat everything below as a starting point, not as permission to travel. Entry rules are the one area where you should always verify against an official source for your specific nationality before booking anything non-refundable.

The four ways in

There are four practical routes into China as a tourist. Which one applies to you depends entirely on your nationality.

1. Unilateral visa-free entry — a 30-day stay for ordinary passport holders of a listed set of countries, for tourism, business, family visits, exchange and transit.
2. Visa-free transit — a 240-hour (10-day) stay, available to a different and larger list of nationalities, but only if you are genuinely in transit to a third country.
3. Regional schemes — most importantly Hainan island, which has a 30-day visa-free arrangement covering a wider list of countries, with the catch that you cannot leave the island without a visa.
4. An ordinary tourist visa (L) — the default for everyone else, including travellers from the United States and India.

Unilateral visa-free entry (30 days)

Holders of ordinary passports from a published list of countries — currently around fifty — may enter China without a visa for up to 30 days for tourism, business, family visits and transit. The 30 days are counted from 00:00 on the day after you enter.

Two things matter more than the list itself:

• The schemes expire. The large majority of countries currently in the scheme are covered only until 31 December 2026. Russia’s arrangement runs longer, to 31 December 2027. Sweden was added in November 2025; the United Kingdom and Canada were added on 17 February 2026; Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain were added more recently. An earlier Russian arrangement ended on 14 September 2026.
• It is not universal. The United States and India are not in the unilateral scheme. Neither are most African and Middle Eastern countries, though several Gulf states now are. Roughly thirty further countries have separate, mutual visa-exemption treaties with China — Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Georgia, Kazakhstan and the UAE among them — and those tend to be more durable than the unilateral list.

If your nationality is on the list, you still need a passport valid for the duration of your stay, and you should carry proof of onward travel and accommodation even though it is rarely asked for.

Visa-free transit: the 240-hour rule

The transit scheme is the most useful route for nationalities that are not on the unilateral list — including United States citizens.

You can stay up to 240 hours (10 days) without a visa if you:

• hold an ordinary passport from one of the participating countries (currently 57);
• are travelling onward to a third country or region — you cannot fly in from and back to the same place;
• hold a confirmed onward ticket with a departure date inside the 240 hours;
• enter through one of the designated ports (65 of them) and stay inside the permitted areas (24 provincial-level regions).

The permit is applied for free on arrival. Cross-province travel is allowed within the permitted areas, which is why the scheme is far more useful than the old 72- and 144-hour versions it replaced in December 2024. Work, study and journalism are excluded. A separate 24-hour airside transit applies at all ports for people who never leave the airport.

Kyrgyzstan and Vietnam were added to the transit list on 20 August 2026, which brought the total to 57.

Hainan and other regional schemes

Hainan island offers 30 days visa-free to ordinary passport holders from around sixty countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Russia. The condition is strict: your travel is limited to Hainan. Leaving the island for the mainland requires a visa.

Other narrow schemes exist for cruise passengers arriving on organised group shore excursions, for Hong Kong and Macao tour groups entering the Greater Bay Area, and for ASEAN tour groups visiting Xishuangbanna and Guilin. These depend on travelling as part of an approved group and are not useful for independent travellers.

If you need a tourist (L) visa

Applicants from countries covered by none of the above — the United States and India most prominently — apply for an L visa.

• Application: the COVA online form, completed and uploaded, followed by passport submission in person or through an appointed agent. There is no mail-in option in most jurisdictions.
• Documents: passport valid at least six months with two blank pages, a 48 × 33 mm photograph, and flight and hotel bookings. Travel insurance is not required.
• Biometrics: fingerprints are waived for all short-stay applicants (stays of 180 days or less) from 17 December 2025 until 31 December 2026. Applicants under 14 and over 70 are permanently exempt.
• Cost and timing: the United States charges a flat US$140 fee regardless of how many entries you request, with regular processing in about four business days. The ten-year multiple-entry L and M visa is still issued to US citizens, permitting stays of 60–90 days per entry. UK fees are £64 for regular processing, £128 for a five-year visa and £191 for a ten-year visa, under a reduction running to 31 December 2026.

We have not been able to verify the ten-year multiple-entry arrangement for Canada or Israel, so check with the relevant visa centre if that is what you are counting on.

Arrival formalities

• Arrival card: since 20 November 2025 the arrival card is electronic, completed through the National Immigration Administration’s website, app, or its WeChat and Alipay mini-programmes. Paper cards are largely gone.
• Health declaration: the COVID-era health declaration requirement has been abolished.
• Fingerprints: collected at entry for most foreign nationals, with exemptions for young children, older travellers and some nationalities.
• Customs: declare cash above RMB 20,000 or foreign currency above US$5,000, more than 1,500 ml of alcohol, more than 400 cigarettes, and personal goods valued at RMB 2,000 or more. Fresh food, meat and plants are prohibited.
• Registration: hotels register foreign guests with the police automatically at check-in. If you stay anywhere else — a friend’s flat, an Airbnb — you must register within 24 hours. Since 21 September 2026 this can be done online nationwide.
• Carry your passport. It is required for hotel check-in, train travel, and entry to most major attractions. A photocopy or a phone photo will not be accepted.

Attraction bookings are the new bottleneck

The genuinely difficult part of a China trip is no longer the visa. It is the timed, real-name reservation systems at major attractions. The Forbidden City in Beijing, the Terracotta Army in Xi’an and the National Museum all require passport-based bookings made days in advance, and the Forbidden City in particular sells no tickets at the gate at all.

Plan those bookings as early as your passport details allow, and treat them as fixed points around which the rest of the itinerary moves.

How to verify your own case

Check, in this order:

1. The National Immigration Administration of China, for the current visa-free and transit lists and their expiry dates.
2. The Chinese embassy or visa application centre for your country, for visa requirements and fees.
3. Your airline, for the practical check-in question of whether they will board you — airlines enforce entry rules at the gate, and their interpretation is what actually decides your trip.

A note on precision

Different official pages publish different totals for the same scheme, and older pages stay online for years. You will see the unilateral visa-free list described as covering 43, 50 or 54 countries depending on when the page was last updated. That is why this guide names dates rather than presenting a number as permanent, and why we would rather tell you a rule expires on 31 December 2026 than tell you it is simply “visa-free”.