in transit

Question

Hello! American citizen, landing in Shanghai and wanting to take a connecting flight without leaving the airport to get out to destination Beijing. Would i be able apply for the 144 hour transit visa as i get to Shanghai or beijing? Would like to spend a couple of days in Beijing to then leave to hong kong or seoul. I will be leaving within 144 hours. Can this work? Thanks for the help!

Borut · Answer

No, unfortunately, this is not possible without a visa obtained in advance. Simply speaking, you are not allowed to have two mainland Chinese destinations in a row when traveling on 144 hour visa free transit. In other words, when you arrive in Shanghai, you will be formally in a transit, but you will have to cross immigration because this is the immigration policy in/of China. It is similar to US where an arriving passenger has to perform immigration at the very first point of entry. Everything else is a domestic travel. The only thing you can do is to try to adapt your travel itinerary in order to have just one landing in mainland China. For example:US - Beijing - Hong KongorUS - Korea - Beijing - Hong KongThat would be eligible for 144 hour visa free transit.

In Transit

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