The State Council’s guide to living and travelling in China covers phone calls. It does not cover SIM cards, data plans or eSIMs. It is older and narrower than that, so this page reports what it says and marks where it stops.
Calls from your hotel
“Tourists can make domestic long distance calls or international calls from their hotel room and the call charge will be added into the hotel expense.”
No phone card or counter visit is needed. The charge goes on your bill.
Away from the hotel, the guide names two other options: “Domestic long distance calls and international calls can be made from post offices and public phone booths near the scenic spots, shops and entertainment venues.”
Dialling codes
- Domestic long distance: “you shall first dial the area code, then the local number.”
- International, from inside China: “you shall first dial ‘00’ (international prefix number), then the country code and the area code and finally the local number.”
Phone cards
The guide names three places to find them: “Phone cards are available in post offices inside hotels or in the streets. Even more conveniently, most news stands in major cities also carry phone cards.”
Calling China from abroad
The guide gives two rules, split by line type.
- Landline: “you must first dial the international prefix number, for example in the United States you dial 011, then dial 86 the country code for China, then the area code and local number.”
- Mobile: there is no area code to add: “you first need dial the international prefix number, and then dial 86, then the mobile number.”
What the guide does not cover
Nothing in it addresses buying a Chinese SIM card, a data-only eSIM or a prepaid mobile plan. It also does not say what a foreign visitor needs to register a mobile line (a passport in most countries). If you need mobile data, resolve it separately, through your own carrier’s international roaming plan or once you are at the airport.
Our own checking on data eSIMs
Everything above is the State Council guide. This part is our own checking, dated 3 September 2026, and kept separate for that reason.
A data-only eSIM avoids registering a Chinese line at all. Saily sells China plans from US$4.49 for 1GB over 7 days, and 20GB for 30 days at US$39.99. Its wider Asia and Oceania plan covers 22 countries from US$4.99.
Set it up before you fly. Saily’s own China page states: “To ensure your eSIM data works, set up your eSIM before traveling. Due to local restrictions, access to the Saily app may be limited in China.” A plan bought after landing is worth little if the app needed to activate it will not open.
We have not tested Saily inside China and make no claim about its speed or network. The prices and that setup warning are what we checked.
Where your data comes out
A foreign eSIM does not put you behind China’s domestic filtering. Your handset connects to a Chinese network, but the traffic is carried back out and breaks out overseas, so the filtering that applies to a domestic Chinese line does not apply to you. Jetpac describes this without hedging: it “routes your traffic through gateways outside China”, and on that basis “WhatsApp, Gmail, and Google will work on your phone without a separate VPN”. Of Instagram, Facebook and YouTube it says “all three work on an international eSIM exactly as they do at home”.
We have used Jetpac in mainland China and it behaved exactly as described. Services that are unreachable on a local line were reachable, with no VPN and nothing to configure. That is one traveller’s report, not a benchmark. We did not time speeds and cannot say which carrier the eSIM attached to.
Any eSIM that breaks out overseas behaves this way. Jetpac’s own wording says so when it explains that “international eSIMs bypass it automatically”. Providers differ in price, coverage and whether their app is reachable from inside China at all. That last point is the practical catch: an eSIM you cannot activate is not a connection, which is why the setup warning above matters more here than in any other country.
No VPN involved
Using an international roaming plan is ordinary travel behaviour. It needs no software, no workaround and no account with anyone. The usual advice for China is to install a VPN before you fly, which is a legally murkier suggestion that no official source endorses.
Saily sells a China eSIM from US$4.49, and warns to set it up before you travel Our full write-up. (affiliate link)
Jetpac, the eSIM we used in mainland China (affiliate link)