A layover in China used to come in two flavors: 72 hours or 144 hours, depending on the port. Neither is the current rule. Eligible travelers can now stay for up to 240 hours, ten full days, before continuing on to a third country.
“The stay duration for foreign nationals eligible for visa-free transit has been extended from the previous 72 hours and 144 hours to 240 hours (10 days).”
Ten days is enough to see one city properly, or move between two or three, before you fly onward. It is also easy to confuse with a completely different policy, so start with what makes this one distinct.
This is a transit rule, not a general tourist waiver
The policy exists for one specific situation: passing through China on the way to somewhere else. Eligibility runs through travelers “traveling from China to a third country (region).” If your trip starts and ends in China, this isn’t the exemption you want. See our guide to China’s general visa-free entry for the policy that covers ordinary tourism instead.
Who qualifies, and where you can land
Fifty-four countries are currently eligible, a list the source itself names only in part, calling out “Russia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Canada” as examples. A full nationality list is exactly the kind of detail that changes without much notice, so we’re not reprinting it here. Check your nationality against the official page linked below before you book anything around this trip.
Entry is available at any of 60 open ports spread across 24 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities. That’s a count worth knowing, not a directory worth copying: the full list of ports lives on the official page, and it’s the version to trust on the day you travel.
You can move between provinces, but not everywhere
The 240 hours aren’t a free pass to roam the country. Travelers under this policy must stay “within the allowed areas for visa-free transit travelers,” a defined footprint rather than the whole map. Within that footprint, the policy does allow crossing provincial lines: foreign nationals entering under this rule “can make cross-province travels within the allowed areas… in these 24 provinces.”
How much of each province is open varies enormously
This is the detail most summaries skip. “Allowed area” doesn’t mean the same thing from province to province.
In Anhui, Hainan, and Guizhou, the entire province is open. In Shanxi, it’s limited to two cities, Taiyuan and Datong. In Jiangxi, it’s two different cities, Nanchang and Jingdezhen. Fujian, Hubei, and Shaanxi have since been expanded to cover their entire provinces, and Guangxi’s allowed area is defined city by city, a named set running to about a dozen urban centers including Nanning and Guilin, rather than the whole autonomous region.
The practical takeaway: landing in a province doesn’t mean you can travel freely across it. Confirm the specific cities open to you before planning a multi-stop itinerary.
When the 240-hour clock starts isn’t specified
It doesn’t say how the 240-hour clock is actually measured, whether it starts at the immigration stamp, the flight’s scheduled arrival, or something else. It doesn’t describe what proof of onward travel you’re expected to carry. And it doesn’t say whether your entry and exit ports need to differ. For all three, the safer move is the same one that applies to the eligibility list itself: confirm on the official page, close to your travel date, rather than assuming this works the way a similar rule elsewhere does.