China's 144-Hour Visa-Free Policy Is Now 240 Hours

If you came here looking for China’s 144-hour visa-free policy, the honest answer is that it no longer exists. On 17 December 2024 the National Immigration Administration folded the old 72-hour and 144-hour transit schemes into a single 240-hour rule, and everything that made the 144-hour version awkward went with it. Ten days instead of six. Sixty-five ports instead of thirty-nine. And the freedom to leave the province you landed in, which is the change that actually matters. Here is what the replacement says.

What happened to the 144-hour visa-free policy

It was not canceled and it was not narrowed. It was lengthened. The official notice puts it in one line: the stay for transit visa-free entry was extended from the former 72 hours and 144 hours to 240 hours, ten days, effective immediately. Same policy, longer clock. There is no separate 240-hour scheme sitting alongside a surviving 144-hour one, no new form, and nothing to reapply for.

The same announcement changed more than the hours.

Anyone still publishing the 144-hour rule is quoting a document written before December 2024. That includes a lot of airline pages, a lot of travel blogs, and until today, this one.

What the 240-hour visa-free transit policy is

It is a transit exemption, not a tourist visa by another name. You are permitted to enter mainland China without a visa on the condition that you are passing through on the way to somewhere else, and you get 240 hours to do it in.

The clock is generous in a way most people miss. It starts at midnight on the day after you enter, not when your wheels touch the runway. Land on 19 December and the count begins at 00:00 on 20 December, so you have until midnight on 29 December to be gone. The arrival day is free.

Inside that window you may travel, do business, attend meetings, and visit family and friends. Work, study and news reporting are still off limits without prior approval and the right visa, and no immigration officer will treat that as a technicality.

Two things it is not. It is not the 24-hour direct transit exemption, which is open to every nationality but keeps you inside the port’s restricted area. And it is not the unilateral 30-day visa-free program, which is a different policy with a different country list, covered below.

Which countries are eligible for visa-free transit

Fifty-five, as of Indonesia’s addition on 12 June 2025. By region that is 40 in Europe, seven in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Brunei, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Indonesia), six in the Americas (the United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile), and Australia and New Zealand.

The American case is the one that trips people up. The United States is on the 240-hour transit list. The United States is not on China’s unilateral 30-day visa-free list, which covers around 50 countries as of 17 February 2026, the date the UK and Canada were added, and which runs through 31 December 2026. Neither is India, Vietnam, the Philippines, or most of Africa. For an American with no visa, transit is the only way in, and the onward-ticket condition below is not negotiable.

If your passport is not on either list, or your trip does not fit the transit shape, the route is an ordinary visa. Our guide on whether you need a visa to go to China walks through the twelve categories and which one matches your reason for travel.

Where you can enter, and where you can actually go

Sixty-five ports across 24 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. The list covers every airport you would expect, from Beijing Capital and Daxing through Shanghai Pudong and Hongqiao, Guangzhou Baiyun, Shenzhen Bao’an, Chengdu Tianfu and Shuangliu, and Chongqing Jiangbei.

The expansions have gone well past the obvious hubs. December 2024 added 21 ports, including Yiwu, Wenzhou, Quanzhou Jinjiang, Zhangjiajie, Haikou Meilan and Sanya Phoenix. On 5 November 2025 five Guangdong ports followed, taking the total to 65, and two of them are not airports at all: the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge crossing, and West Kowloon Station on the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong high-speed rail link. The train from Hong Kong into the mainland is now a qualifying entry.

Then the rule that most published guides still have backwards. You may cross provincial boundaries. The official wording is explicit: foreign nationals entering under the transit visa-free policy may travel between provinces within the permitted stay areas of those 24 regions. Your exit port does not have to be your entry port either. Land at Shanghai, take the train to Xi’an, fly to Chengdu, leave from Beijing, all inside one window. Under the 144-hour scheme none of that was allowed; you stayed in the region that stamped you in. That restriction ended in December 2024 and has outlived itself in print ever since.

One caveat before you plan a route on it. The permitted area is not always the entire province. Shanxi is limited to Taiyuan and Datong, Jiangxi to Nanchang and Jingdezhen, and there are others. Check the permitted area for each region you intend to touch, not just whether the region is on the list.

What you need to qualify

Four things, and border inspection checks all four.

• An ordinary passport from one of the 55 eligible countries, valid for at least three months.
• An interline ticket with a confirmed date and seat to a third country or region, departing within the 240 hours. A reservation without a seat is not a ticket.
• Entry through one of the 65 designated ports. Arriving anywhere else means the exemption does not apply, whatever your nationality.
• A genuine third destination. This is where trips fail.

You must be going somewhere new. New York to Shanghai to Seoul qualifies. New York to Shanghai and back to New York does not, and presenting it as transit is treated as attempted illegal entry rather than an honest mistake.

The words “or region” in the rule are doing real work. Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan run their own immigration systems, so they count as onward destinations. Shanghai to Hong Kong is a valid transit leg, which is also why a mainland visa gets you nowhere at Hong Kong immigration and vice versa.

How it works when you land

Follow the signs for visa-free transit or temporary entry rather than joining the general foreigners queue. Hand over the passport, the onward ticket and the address you are staying at. Border inspection issues a temporary entry permit stamped into the passport with an expiry date printed on it, and that date, not your own arithmetic, is what governs. Read it before you leave the hall. Fingerprints and a facial scan at the e-gate are routine.

The paper landing card is history. Since 20 November 2025 there is an online arrival card, filed through the National Immigration Administration website, the NIA 12367 app, or the WeChat and Alipay mini programs. Paper is still accepted at the counter if you have not filed, so this saves queue time rather than blocking you.

One duty that catches people out: accommodation registration is the law, not a formality. A hotel files it for you at check-in. Stay in a friend’s apartment or a private rental and you register yourself at the local police station within 24 hours. Nobody is going to remind you.

When visa-free transit gets refused

Refusals are uncommon and almost always predictable. The published grounds are a passport with under three months of validity, visa refusal marks in the passport, and any illegal entry, illegal residence or illegal employment in China within the past five years. In practice the everyday cause is simpler: a missing onward ticket, or an onward ticket that goes back where you came from.

Border inspection keeps discretion regardless. If you are turned around, you are refused entry and sent back, so the fix is upstream. Book the third-country leg before you fly, and carry it printed as well as on your phone.

What ten days actually buys you

Six days was a stopover. Ten days, with the freedom to cross provinces, is a trip, and it changes what is worth attempting. Beijing and the Great Wall in the same window as Xi’an and the Terracotta Army is now realistic instead of reckless. So is Shanghai with Suzhou and Hangzhou attached, or Guangzhou with a run up to Chengdu for the pandas, or Chongqing and the Yangtze.

The constraint is no longer the map. It is that you are working in a country where the ticket machine, the museum booking system and the taxi driver all assume you read Chinese, and you have a hard exit date you cannot renegotiate.

The short version

The 144-hour visa-free policy ended on 17 December 2024 and was replaced by a better one. You get 240 hours, ten days, counted from midnight on the day after you arrive. Fifty-five nationalities qualify, including Americans, who are on this list and not on the 30-day one. Sixty-five ports across 24 provinces and regions accept you, you can cross provincial boundaries once you are in, and you can leave from a different port than the one you entered by. What you cannot do is fly home again: the onward ticket has to go to a third country or region, and that is the condition worth checking twice before you book anything.