Six Day Visa Free Transit is Live in Beijing and 5 Other Places in China

by Gary Leff

On Thursday visa free transit was extended up to 144 hours for Beijing and broadened to include the Tianjin and Hebei regions.

Six ports of entry and departure are included:

  • Beijing Capital International Airport
  • Beijing’s West Railway Station
  • Tianjin Binhai International Airport
  • Tianjin International Cruise Home Port
  • Shijiazhuang Zhengding International Airport
  • Qinhuangdao Port

In fact you can enter any of these 6 places and depart from one of the others provided that:

  1. You are a citizen of one of 53 eligible countries
  2. You are entering from one country or region and departing for another country or region

With Chinese transit without visa you cannot be doing a straight turn, flying US-China-US. However you are eligible flying US-China-Hong Kong as the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region involves clearing passport control when coming from (and going to) China.

Citizens of these countries are eligible for the new 144 hour visa free transit:

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. I have a four day trip to Beijing in April from the US. Could I potentially book a RT flight from Beijing to, say, Hong Kong and then use this transit visa ‘twice’ to avoid needing a regular visa?

  2. Why anyone would want to visit this authoritarian police state where uncivilized peasants live happily with flagrant human rights abuse and party-state-executed ethnic cleansing, where thousands of years of culture has been destroyed over the past century’s Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and more recent systemic greed in society that prevails all other values, and where you are guaranteed to breathe toxic air, drink unsanitary water, and eat food laden with chemicals, metals and pedticides is beyond me.

  3. Ken Y, agree, I have the same view on visiting the USA.
    You forgot to mention all the processed foods, the guns and the prescription drugs.

  5. @Ken Y

    I have visited both China and US plenty of times – for business.
    While I surely would not visit China for vacation as I dislike the spitting, screaming etc, I never felt intimidated, nor was mistreated by uniformed servants.
    This is quite different from US, where the unwelcoming behavior starts right in the airport with uniformed peasants screaming at people queuing up, not even to mention the police shootings, the security and guns everywhere.
    Needless to say, I won’t visit US for holiday either.

    Maybe for you as US citizen it is different, but I am not one of those.

  6. Elliot it’s better to just get a visa for China. It’s good for 10 years and you can visit other cities in China. With the 144 hour visa you must stay in Beijing.
    When you leave the USA you must have a ticket from China to HKG with a seat assignment. When you arrive in Beijing you have to go to a special line (to the left of the immigration line). Give the agent your outbound ticket with seat assignment showing you are leaving in less then 144 hours. Then you get your visa. Then you’ll have to do the same thing on the return. So you can do it but you it’s easier if you just get a 10 year visa.

  7. Ken & Ron, pls get your facts straight, why would anyone wanted to visit this earth where authoritarian entities rule everywhere, bureaucratic inefficiency & hypocritical duplicity existed every part of the land? while human rights and equality found only in scrolls and texts?

  8. @ron – The only time I see guns in public is when they’re carried by police. Where are you going that guns are everywhere? Inner city Chicago? Gun shows? In fact, everything you mention is very rare except maybe for TSA yelling at people which I’ve never seen either. No need to visit if you don’t want to, of course.

  9. Get over yourself Ken Y, you’re a moron, this is neither the time nor place to vent your political views, do it on CNN, they love fake news. In the meantime, give yourself an almighty upper-cut.

  10. @Elliott, you are right. That’s how I get my transit visa. I really wish China could loose the policy to grand 5 days landing visa in the future.

    I would assume holiday is go to place that makes you comfortable. YMMV. But I did find sightseeing places like Yellow Mountain worth efforts. Even though public spitting makes me shiver every single time.

  11. I am flying into PEK on Dec. 19th, and want to fly out on Dec. 24th for KUL. Would this work? Also, do I need to bring any special documentation or do anything online for this 144 hour transit visa?

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