The 2026 China Digital Setup Checklist Nobody Updated

Search "how to prepare for a trip to China" and you'll get confident, detailed, well-ranked guides — describing a country that no longer exists. The entry rules were rewritten in December 2024 and have kept moving since. The payment limits changed. The eSIM situation changed. Most top results still quote the old versions of all three.

I'm not going to pretend this post will age better than theirs. Policies move, so everything below is written the way I'd want to read it: dated, specific where the official number is known, and honest about where you should check the primary source yourself before booking anything.

1. Entry: there are now two visa-free doors, and most guides only know the old one

Door one: 30-day visa-free entry. Citizens of around 50 countries — most of Europe, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina, and a growing list of others — can now enter China with no visa at all for business, tourism, family visits, exchange, or transit, for up to 30 days. Beijing extended this unilateral policy through December 31, 2026, and the country list has grown more than once, most recently in early 2026. If your guide says the scheme "ends in 2025," it's quoting last year's notice.

Door two: the 240-hour transit. Since December 17, 2024, the old 72/144-hour transit-without-visa scheme has been replaced by a 240-hour (10-day) one. It launched covering 54 nationalities, 60 ports of entry, and permitted areas across 24 provinces — and the nationality list has expanded since (Indonesia joined in mid-2025, for example).

The transit fine print is where people get caught, so read it twice:

• You must be travelling to a third country or region. Flying in from Tokyo and back to Tokyo is a round trip, not a transit, and doesn't qualify. Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan count as separate destinations for this rule.
• You need a confirmed onward ticket with a seat, departing within the 240 hours. An open ticket or a vague plan is not enough.
• The clock starts at 00:00 on the day after you enter, which quietly gives you most of an extra day.
• Your passport should be valid for at least 3 months from entry.
• You must stay inside the permitted areas attached to the scheme — it's not a roam-anywhere pass.
• Tourism, business, and visiting friends and family are fine. Work, study, and news reporting are not — those still need a proper visa arranged in advance.

Neither door is a guarantee of entry; the officer at the desk decides. But walk in with the right door chosen and the paperwork matching it, and it's routine.

2. Money: your foreign card works — inside an app, with a fee line at ¥200

The single most useful change of the last two years: you no longer need a Chinese bank account to pay like a local. Both Alipay and WeChat Pay accept foreign-issued cards (Visa, Mastercard, and others depending on the app), and you can register with your own overseas phone number. No Chinese number, no local bank, no residency.

What the old guides get wrong, in order of how much it costs you:

• Verify your passport in the app, before you fly. Verified visitors can spend up to the published ceilings for international cards — US$5,000 per transaction and US$50,000 per year. Unverified accounts run into much lower, sometimes unpredictable limits, usually at the worst moment (a hotel desk, a hospital registration). Do the scan at home.
• Remember ¥200. Payments of ¥200 or less carry no platform fee on a foreign card. Above ¥200, a 3% fee on the full amount may apply. It's rarely worth splitting a bill over, but you should know why a ¥600 dinner costs more than ¥600.
• Foreign cards can't do everything. Red packets and person-to-person transfers are off the table with an international card. If a landlord or a friend needs a transfer rather than a merchant payment, that's a different problem — solve it before it's urgent.
• Set up both apps, then make one small test payment after you land. Alipay is usually the smoother first wallet for visitors; WeChat Pay matters because half the country's small merchants and hosts live inside WeChat. Belt and suspenders.
• Physical cards and cash are the backup, not the plan. Big hotels and flagship stores may take your plastic directly; the noodle shop won't. Cash is still legal tender — carry a modest amount for the day everything else fails.

3. Connectivity: the routing matters more than the data

The question isn't "eSIM or SIM card." It's "where does this plan route my traffic?"

• A travel eSIM routed outside the mainland is the default answer. Installed from a QR code before departure, activated on landing, your data exits via Hong Kong or Singapore — which means Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, and the rest of your normal stack just work, with no VPN and no registration queue at arrivals.
• Read the fine print, because not every "China eSIM" routes that way. Some plans terminate locally and hand you a connection behind the firewall, gigabytes and all. If the product page won't say where traffic exits, assume the worse answer.
• A local SIM is a deliberate choice, not a default. Buying one means in-person real-name registration with your passport (expect a face scan) at a carrier store, and the connection sits behind the firewall — Google and WhatsApp stay blocked unless you add a VPN. Its real value is the +86 number, which some local apps and verification flows still demand. Worth it for long stays; overhead for a 10-day trip.
• "China doesn't do eSIM" is now outdated — and mostly irrelevant to you. In October 2025, China's three carriers received approval for domestic eSIM phone services. But those are provisioned under the same in-person real-name regime, built for resident subscribers. Interesting headline; doesn't change a visitor's playbook.
• VPN rule, unchanged and still ignored: install it and test it before you leave home. Downloading one reliably from inside is the one step of this checklist that cannot be done late.

The pre-flight checklist, condensed

1. Confirm which visa-free door fits your passport and route — and re-check the current country list on the National Immigration Administration's site, because it changes.
2. If transiting: onward confirmed ticket to a third country/region, inside 240 hours.
3. Install Alipay and WeChat Pay; link your foreign card; complete passport verification.
4. Install a travel eSIM that routes outside the mainland; test it before departure.
5. Install and test your VPN at home, even if you expect the eSIM to make it redundant.
6. Carry one physical card and a small amount of cash as the failure-mode backup.

This post is the short version. My China Arrival Pack covers the same ground in working depth — the app stack beyond payments, high-speed rail booking, ride-hailing with a foreign number, and the arrival-day sequence step by step. If you spot anything here that's gone stale, tell me: corrections are the whole point of this series. toby.water@outlook.com