How to apply for a visa for China

Applying for a China visa from Portugal takes, in the normal case, four to seven working days and costs between 80 and 130 euros, adding the consular fee and the service fee of the visa centre. Before anything else, though, it is worth checking whether you need one at all: since 2024, holders of Portuguese passports have been entering China without a visa, for up to 15 days, under a unilateral measure. If your trip to China fits inside those fifteen days, there is no paperwork at all — just a passport valid for more than six months, an outbound ticket and a hotel booking.

Now, two warnings about that exemption. The first: it has an end date and has already been renewed more than once, so confirm the rule in force at the embassy in the week you buy the flight. The second: the exemption does not work for anyone staying longer than fifteen days, entering twice on the same ticket, or travelling for work. Outside those cases the visa is the route — and it is a route with rules of its own, worth knowing before you book the trip to the centre.

What to gather before booking the appointment

The visa centre does not accept “I’ll deal with that later”. The list is short and closed:

• Passport valid for at least six months on the day of entry, with two blank pages.
• Form completed online, printed and signed. There is no handwritten version.
• Photograph in colour, white background, 48 × 33 mm, taken within the last six months.
• Complete itinerary: inbound flight, outbound flight, hotel booking for every night.
• Proof of funds, in practice a recent bank statement, requested with some frequency.

The two points that most often sink applications are an out-of-format photograph and missing hotel bookings. If you are organising the trip right now, the route that most often serves as a base is our Essential China, with every night named city by city. If you are staying with friends or in accommodation you will book later, present the nights you have and complete it afterwards: what the centre wants to see is coherence between the flight dates and the accommodation dates, not perfect accounting.

The form: where the time goes

The online form runs to eight pages and saves automatically, which helps. Three fields deserve attention, because they are the ones that get applications sent back:

The passport number, which has to be copied character by character. An O where a zero should be and the process starts over.

The address in China, which cannot be left empty. Write the first hotel on the itinerary, with the name and address as they appear on the booking.

The travel history, where you declare previous entries. Old Chinese visas, particularly if you have held work or residence permits, should be declared. It is not a trap: it is information the consulate already has.

Going to the centre

In Portugal, applications are submitted at the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre in Lisbon, by prior appointment. You go once to submit and once to collect, unless you pay for return by post.

At the counter the officer reviews everything, takes the digital photograph and collects fingerprints — mandatory for all applications. The passport is held during the process, which means you cannot travel outside the Schengen area during that period. Never apply for the visa with a business trip to Switzerland the following week.

Booking two to three weeks ahead is our practical advice, especially between May and September, when the centres run with weeks of waiting.

The deadlines, and what speeding it up costs

Normal service runs between four and seven working days. Urgent comes down to two or three, express to one. Each speed-up adds between 20 and 40 euros to the final bill.

What nobody can speed up is the appointment. In peak months the slot at the centre can take two weeks to come round, and that is where trips get lost — not in the visa itself. If you depart in eight weeks, deal with the visa this week.

Single, double, multiple entry

For anyone doing only China, single entry is enough. For anyone combining China with Hong Kong and Macau and returning to the mainland on the same ticket, double entry is required: Hong Kong and Macau are separate administrative zones, and leaving for them counts as leaving the territory.

This surprises a lot of people. An itinerary that enters in Beijing, flies to Hong Kong and Macau and returns to Shanghai uses up a single entry on the first departure. Decide the sequence before you apply, because changing it afterwards means applying again.

The multiple-entry visa makes sense for anyone travelling for work or expecting more than one trip in the year.

The mistakes that get applications sent back

We see the same four, repeatedly:

Hotel bookings cancelled before the application. The consulate checks. Cancellable bookings are legitimate, but they have to be active on the day of submission; cancel afterwards if you want to change hotel.

Flight and hotel dates that do not line up. A booking starting on the 12th and a flight arriving on the 13th is grounds for return.

A passport with less than six months’ validity. It counts from the intended date of entry, not from the date of application.

An old photograph, or one with glasses. The rules changed; the automatic machines in Portugal rarely produce the Chinese format without adjustment. Go to a studio.

And after you land

With a visa or with the exemption, the entry procedure is the same: arrival form, fingerprints taken at the kiosks and, since 2024, the customs declaration you fill in before the queue or at the kiosks in the corridor.

The most common city of entry on flights from Lisbon is Beijing, and it is also where immigration takes longest on morning flights. One practical note that saves arguments: have the address of the first hotel written on paper, in characters and in Latin script. The form asks for it, and a phone with no signal at the wrong moment is no help at all.

Where the guide comes in

We do not issue visas and we do not represent the consulate, and we are wary of anyone who promises to do it for you. What we do is different, and considerably more useful: we hand you, together with the quote, the itinerary with real bookings that the visa centre accepts — the same one set out step by step in our visa guide — because that is the document missing for anyone organising the trip alone.

For anyone who prefers not to deal with any of it, the same itinerary serves as the basis for an application made by an agency in Lisbon. And if your trip fits inside the fifteen days of the exemption, we tell you so before we charge you anything — because a visa you do not need is just money and time spent.

Questions about your case? Tell us how many days, how many entries and where you are coming from. We reply with what you need and, above all, with what you do not.