Question

Asked by Gary from netherlands | Oct. 23, 2016 12:05

About:72-Hour Visa-Free Transit

Is Hong Kong third country, or not, with respect to 72 hour visa in Shanghai ?

Hello,
We did book flight from Amsterdam to Shanghai (with stopover in Hongkong)
Initially our stay in Shanghai should be 4 days, and than fly to Hong Kong (stay there for one week) and return to Amsterdam.
We realised 2 days before departure that we did not apply for a China visa.
Our agent advised us to buy additional (new) ticket Shanghai-Hong Kong one day earlier (so staying less than 72hours). According to his information Hong Kong is considered as "a third country".

After arriving in Hong Kong airport we had to collect our boarding pass to Shanghai, the airline employee told us you need visa bacause Hong Kong is not considered to be a "third country".
You can resolve this problem by buying a ticket to a third country like Japan or Korea.
You dont use this ticket and simply return to Hong Kong with your original ticket.
So we did.
At Shanghai airport we got finally a 144 hours visa, based on the ticket to Seoul.

Now we are in Shanghai but don't want to go to Seoul ticket, and return to Hong Kong.

Please can somebody advise me on next points:
1) Is Hong Kong 3rd destination or not ?
2) If no, I am afraid we have no other option to leave to Seoul. Wright ??
3) Of yes, can I simply skip the Seoul ticket and make use of our return ticket to Hong Kong ?

Hope somebody can advise me what to do.

Reply

Answers (3)

Answered by Thomas | Oct. 24, 2016 10:25

1 0 Reply

HongKong is a 3rd country but your agent told you a lot of wrong things.

If you enter Shanghai from HongKong you can´t fly back to HongKong!!
HongKong - Shanghai - 3rd country (in your case S.Korea).
You can´t fly HongKong - Shanghai - HongKong and use the 144h twov.

If you skip your flight to Seoul and wanna try to fly back to HongKong you´ll run into a lot of problems.
The immigrations has your flight details and if you try to fly back to HongKong it means you had to stay illegal in Shanghai.
With some luck you just have to pay a fine.
Take the flight to Seoul and you´re fine.
I wouldn´t mess with the chinese immigration.

1 0 Reply

Answered by Gary | Oct. 24, 2016 22:21

0 0 Reply

Dear Thomas,

Thanks for your kind reply,

Please note next updates about the situation:
1) We did fly from Ansterdam to sHanghai with a transfer (not stopover) in Hong Kong.
So in my opnion we did arrive from Amsterdam.
2) After consulting local immigration we decided to make use of our ticket to Seoul, however
did additionally buy return ticket Seoul/Shanghai for same day.
In this way we should leave China as required.
Returning from Seoul and using our original ticket to Hong Kong should be ok to get e new visa
for another 144 hours.
3) At the airport we tried to contact the immigration office to double check if there was no other
solution. Unfortunately tghe office only open at 9:00AM and our flght was already at 8:00.
So we had no oter option to check in and fly to Korea.
We could not resist to talk with the immigration employee at the passport control but he also
said I just can stamp your passport but after that you can talk with my officer.
The officer was very kind and clever and said, no problem if you want to cancel your flight.
You dont have to fly, you can stay here and use your current visa to leave to Hong Kong
tomorrow. She changed our data in the computer system and put a stamp "cancelled" on top
of the stamp the employee did put in our passport a few minutees earlier.
Have no idea if this could have in an earlier stage, but we were happy we did not loose a day in
Shanghai.

Hope this will help to get a better view on this matter.

0 0 Reply

Answered by Thomas | Oct. 25, 2016 15:07

1 0 Reply

1. Your last stop before China was HongKong not Amsterdam.
It doesn´t matter if you have a transfer or stopover or whatever.
For the chinese immigration just the last airport you had a touchdown is relevant, in your case HongKong.

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