Travellers to China waste money, time & effort on unnecessary visas.

 

Chinese Visa Application Service Centre in Australia do not advice applicants if their service is not required

 

Sydney 10. June 2018

 

By Lolita Tan

 

 

Usually travellers to China would require a visa but there are important exceptions in force whereby certain areas of China are exempted or visa can be issued on arrival but most important and of particular interest to short stay visitors would be the

6 day (144 hours) visit pass issued on arrival in a number of major Chinese city's like Shanghai, Beijing etc. This pass is issued swiftly and without any commotion on arrival and its free of charge as long as the traveller hold an ongoing flight reservation within the giving period. Full details can be found here:

https://www.travelchinaguide.com/embassy/visa/free-transit-144hour.htm

 

Apparently Chinese consulates in Australia appointed an Australian registered company :

 CITS V SERVICE(Australia) Pty Ltd

To handle exclusively all visa applications for China but the Chinese Visa Application Service Centre in Australia do not advise applicants that there service is not required under certain circumstances as a journalist

had to learn it the hard way recently.

 

Mr. Titze a travel writer and journalist never was able to obtain a visa.

After 6 visit to the Chinese visa centre no visa was issued  (it appears China has some kind of a problem admitting journalist) In the end and after wasting a whole day Mr. Titze was finally able to recover his passport from the Chinese visa centre down by about $ 150.– in fees and expenditures but without a visa. Already advising colleagues from around the world that he will not be able to attend  ITB China travel convention . On the last day of his proposed departure to Shanghai he received a message from an European colleagues  asking what is all the fuss about because based on his existing travel arrangements no visa needed. So the trip went well ahead without any problems. At Shanghai airport there is a special counter issuing this 144 hour visit pass  and they had no problems with journalist either.

 

After returning to Sydney naturally Mr. Titze asked the Chinese visa centre why he was never advised that no visa was needed in his case the answers are somewhat strange. Naturally it is in the commercial interest of China Visa Service not to advise applicants of existing rules since they charge a substantial fee.  The staff there is only identified by numbers so Mr. Titze was dealing with # 68 who replied that rules to this exemption can only be obtained by calling a certain phone number in China which is a similar response he got from the management. Strangely the website of the Chinese consulate in Sydney also does not seem to mentioning this 144 visit pass.

No explanation was given why he was never advised.

 

A snap survey revealed that Australian travel agents seems to be mostly unaware of current Chinese visa rules.