Check my eligibility

Unfortunately, your itinerary is not eligible for 240 hour visa free transit. The golden rule is that the immediate points before and after mainland China have to be in two different countries or eligible territories (eligible territories are Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macau). As you can see, your itinerary has both immediate points in one country - France. This is considered as return journey or round trip and not a transit. If you can, I suggest you to adapt your itinerary so that one of your immediate points is in Netherlands and another one in France, for example. If your tickets are non-refundable and you still want to travel, you will have to, unfortunately, obtain a Chinese visa in advance. I'm sorry.

Thank you for responding so quickly, so I have looked at another holiday to Beijing for 10 days, leaving London Heathrow with a layover in Paris, and then after spending 10 days in Beijing, we fly back to London with another layover but in Amsterdam. This will be fine then? Because I keep getting mixed answers, with some people telling me that layovers are not eligible, which just confuses me so much. I have even emailed the Chinese Embassy asking these same questions but keep getting the same answers where they just screenshot the criteria, which is not answering my actual question, so finding this website and Q&A part has been absolutely amazing, so massive thank you.

Leah, your second itinerary with the layovers in two different countries (France and Netherlands) is definitely eligible for 240 hour visa free transit and you do not need any kind of visa. They are in line with the golden rule that clearly and without any doubt says that only the immediate points before and after China matter and they have to be in two different countries or eligible territories. In other words, Chinese authorities care only about the immediate points and they do not have interest beyond them. Have a nice visit to China, you are go too go.