Last updated: 20 October 2026
Direct answer. China's 240-hour visa-free transit lets ordinary-passport holders from 57 countries enter through 65 ports in 24 provinces for up to 10 days, provided they are travelling onward to a third country or region and hold a confirmed onward ticket. Work, study and news reporting still need a visa approved in advance.
Most people who fail at the check-in desk were not misinformed about the 240 hours. They were misinformed about the two words in front of it: transit and onward. The clock is the easy part. The eligibility tests are where itineraries break, and they break at the airline counter rather than at Chinese immigration.
This page is the operational companion to our overview of every visa-free scheme. That page explains what the four schemes are. This one takes the 240-hour scheme alone and walks the three tests an airline and an immigration officer will actually apply.
The National Immigration Administration's published policy statement sets out the scheme in a single paragraph, and every clause in it is load-bearing:
The same statement describes the separate 24-hour scheme: it applies at all open ports, to nationals of all countries, requires valid international travel documents plus onward flight, ship or train tickets with confirmed seats, and does not let you leave the restricted area of the port. A foreigner who does need to leave that area must first obtain a temporary entry permit from the immigration inspection authority at that port.
A transit means you are going through China to somewhere else. The NIA wording is "transiting through China to third countries or regions". That single phrase eliminates a large share of the itineraries people ask about:
| Itinerary | Transit to a third country? | Reading |
|---|---|---|
| London → Shanghai → Tokyo | Yes (UK → China → Japan) | Qualifies as a transit movement |
| London → Shanghai → London | No (returns to the origin country) | Not a transit to a third country or region |
| Sydney → Guangzhou → Bangkok | Yes | Qualifies as a transit movement |
| New York → Beijing → Hong Kong SAR | Depends on how the sector is documented | Treat as a case to confirm before booking |
The last row is deliberately unresolved here. Whether a given Hong Kong or Macao sector counts as a third "region" for your nationality and your ticket is a question for the immigration authority at the port you intend to use, and for your airline before boarding. We are not going to guess it for you, and a blog post is the wrong place to settle it.
The policy asks for onward tickets with confirmed seats and departure dates. That is a documentary requirement, not an intention. Three practical consequences follow directly from that wording:
If your plan depends on buying the onward leg later, you are asking the airline to accept an unconfirmed intention. Airlines carry the cost of a wrongly boarded passenger, so they check this before you fly, not the immigration officer after you land.
The 240 hours are not a national travel permit. The scheme operates through 65 ports across 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, and each port carries a permitted stay area. Two separate limits therefore apply to the same trip: 10 days, and the area attached to your entry port.
The NIA page names the counts — 57 countries, 65 ports, 24 provinces — but the per-port list and the area maps are not reproduced in this article. Before you build an itinerary around a port, confirm with the immigration authority at that port which area your entry permits. A ten-day plan that assumes you can cross into a province outside your entry port's area is a plan built on an assumption the policy does not make for you.
The list is fixed and published by region. It is worth checking your own nationality against it rather than against a 2024 article, because the composition is not intuitive: several large countries appear here and not on the 30-day unilateral list.
| Region | Count | Countries |
|---|---|---|
| Europe | 40 | Albania, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom |
| North America | 2 | Canada, United States |
| South America | 4 | Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico |
| Oceania | 2 | Australia, New Zealand |
| Asia | 9 | Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, Singapore, South Korea, United Arab Emirates, Vietnam |
Total: 40 + 2 + 4 + 2 + 9 = 57.
The scheme's own list of permitted activities is broader than tourism: travel, business activities, visits and family reunions are all named. The exclusions are equally explicit — work, study and news reporting require prior approval and the appropriate visa. Those are not grey areas to be argued at a border counter.
One more distinction matters if your trip is short. The 24-hour scheme is a different scheme with different conditions: all nationalities, all open ports, onward international transport with confirmed seats, and no leaving the restricted port area without a temporary entry permit. A traveller who is airside for six hours is using that scheme, not the 240-hour one. If your plan involves leaving the airport, read the 24-hour conditions before you count on them.
If any of the four fails, the fallback is not a workaround at the border. It is a visa, applied for before departure. Our guides to the residence permit and to extending a visa inside China cover the longer-stay side; our planning guide on how many days to give China covers what fits inside a ten-day window.
China's 240-hour visa-free transit covers 57 countries through 65 ports in 24 provinces. Here is how the onward-ticket and third-country tests actually work.
Yes. The United States is one of the 57 listed countries, and holders of US ordinary passports can use the scheme when the other conditions are met. The scheme is a transit facility, not a visa.
A return to your country of departure is not transit to a third country or region, so that itinerary does not meet the scheme's routing condition. Check whether another scheme applies to your nationality, or apply for a visa.
The policy requires onward tickets with confirmed seats and confirmed departure dates. It does not prescribe paper. What matters is that the document shows a confirmed seat and a date, and that the airline can verify it at check-in.
The scheme names travel, business activities, visits and family reunions as permitted. Work, study and news reporting require prior approval and the appropriate visa. Remote work is not described in the policy text, and we do not extend the list ourselves.
Under the 24-hour scheme you may not leave the restricted area of the port without a temporary entry permit, which is issued by the immigration inspection authority at that port. The permit is a separate step from the visa-free transit itself.
All sources retrieved 20 October 2026. This page is an independent reading of the sources listed; the official pages themselves are the specification.
| Fact used on this page | Source |
|---|---|
| S1 — National Immigration Administration — Visa-Free Transit Policies (page dated 2026-08-20) | https://en.nia.gov.cn/n147418/n147463/c183412/content.html |