Guide

Permitted activity areas explained

The 240-hour transit permission covers the permitted activity areas of 24 provinces and municipalities, and the official table states that travellers may move across province lines between them. Your entry port does not decide where you may stay. What does limit you is which provinces are on the list, and the six provinces that open only certain cities.

1. What the permitted activity areas are

The 240-hour transit rule is not a nationwide travel pass, but it is also not tied to your entry port. The official National Immigration Administration table lists 24 provinces, autonomous regions, and municipalities, each with its own permitted activity area. The footer of that table states that transit visa-free travellers may stay for 240 hours moving across province lines within those permitted activity areas.

So the practical question is not "which region does my entry port lock me into". It is "is the place I want to stay inside one of these permitted activity areas".

  • Entering at any of the 65 open ports gives you the same permitted activity areas.
  • You may travel between the permitted activity areas of different provinces.
  • Provinces that are not on the list are outside the permitted activity areas entirely.

2. Two layers of limits

The table applies its limits in two layers, and only the second one is easy to miss. First, the province must be one of the 24 on the list. Second, for six of those provinces the permitted activity area is not the whole province but a set of named prefecture-level cities and autonomous prefectures.

A province appearing on the list therefore does not mean every city in it is open. This is where itineraries go wrong most quietly, because the province name looks familiar and the city sounds nearby.

  • Whole-province areas: the entire province, autonomous region, or municipality is inside the permitted activity area.
  • City-level areas: only the cities and autonomous prefectures named in the official table are inside it.
  • Anything outside both cases is not covered, no matter how close it is to a covered area.

3. What your entry port does and does not decide

Your entry port has to be one of the open ports for 240-hour transit, and your passport country has to be eligible. Those are real conditions and the eligibility checker tests them.

What the entry port does not do is fence off where you may stay. There is no official rule that keeps you in the province you arrived in, and no official rule that requires you to leave from a port near where you entered.

  • The entry port must be one of the open ports for transit visa-free entry.
  • The entry port does not narrow the permitted activity areas available to you.
  • The official table does not require your exit port to be in the same area as your entry port.

4. How to check your own itinerary

Check each place you plan to stay, not just the first one. For whole-province areas the province name is enough. For the six city-level provinces you need to confirm the specific prefecture-level city or autonomous prefecture against the official list.

County-level places take the status of the prefecture-level city that administers them, so identify the prefecture before deciding.

  • Open the permitted activity areas tool and look up each province you will stay in.
  • For city-level provinces, match the exact city or autonomous prefecture against the list.
  • Verify against the official source before booking anything you cannot change.

5. Common misunderstandings

The most common mistake is reading 240 hours as permission to travel anywhere in mainland China. The time allowance and the area coverage are separate conditions and both have to hold.

The opposite mistake is just as costly, and it is the one this page previously made: assuming the entry port confines you to the province or a cluster of provinces around it. It does not, and planning as if it did means giving up travel you are entitled to.

  • An eligible passport does not mean nationwide travel.
  • Entering at one port does not confine you to that province.
  • A province being on the list does not mean all of its cities are.
  • A domestic train ticket can still take you outside the permitted activity areas.

6. Snapshot date and verification

This page is generated from the current policy snapshot, which transcribes the official table. The tools on this site read the same snapshot, so they cannot disagree with this page.

Rules, open ports, and permitted areas can change with limited notice. Verify against the official source before travel.

  • Provinces and municipalities with permitted activity areas: 24.
  • Provinces that open only listed cities rather than the whole province: 6.
  • Open ports for transit visa-free entry: 65.