Every policy claim points to a government source.

Step 1 · Extract

We pull structured lists from the NIA 240h transit notice and ordinary visa-free sources: the 55 transit-eligible passport countries, the 65 designated ports, the 24 eligible provinces & municipalities, the current unilateral 30-day visa-free country list, and selected bilateral visa-free agreements for ordinary passports.

Step 2 · Encode

The lists become typed data in src/data/rules.js. The 240h country list remains separate from the broader passport picker, so ordinary visa-free-only countries can appear in the entry checker without creating misleading /240h pages. Every entry carries a snapshot date so downstream pages inherit a consistent "as of" timestamp.

Step 3 · Verify monthly

We re-check NIA sources at least once per calendar month, and within 48 hours of any official policy announcement. The verification pass covers:

• The English and 简体中文 versions of every primary source URL still resolve and the text hasn't changed materially.
• Any new "notice" pages added under the nia.gov.cn news section that touch transit, visa-free, or arrival cards.
• NIA WeChat-account announcements (which sometimes lead the english.nia.gov.cn page by a few days).
• Cross-checks against US/UK/AU/CA embassy advisories — if an embassy reports a policy change that NIA hasn't published yet, we hold off until NIA confirms.

When a policy actually changes, we bump POLICY_SNAPSHOT_DATE in rules.js in the same commit that updates the data. The new date appears on every result page within 5 minutes of deploy.

Step 4 · Triangulate edge cases

Some questions are not explicitly answered by NIA's English notice. For those, we cross-reference with:

• The 简体中文 version of the same notice (sometimes more specific than the English translation).
• NIA press conferences and Q&A summaries published by Xinhua and People's Daily.
• Documented airline / airport practice on FlyerTalk, The Points Guy, Tripadvisor, and Reddit r/travelchina (used as evidence of what actually happens at the counter, never as policy itself).
• Embassy statements that quote a specific NIA clause we can independently verify.

When does the 240-hour clock start?

NIA English text: "Foreigners eligible for visa-free transit can stay for up to 240 hours." The phrasing leaves the start time implicit.

What we ship: We treat the clock as starting at 00:00 local time the day after entry, which matches the long-standing 144-hour (former policy) and 72-hour (older policy) clock convention, and matches what immigration officers at major ports apply in practice. If your flight lands at 23:50, you effectively get a free 10 minutes before the clock starts — confirmed by multiple FlyerTalk reports from 2024-2025.

Is the West Kowloon HSR rail exit valid?

NIA English text: The 65-port list includes "West Kowloon Station" but does not explicitly classify it as a rail exit in the English notice.

What we ship: WKL is treated as a valid rail exit for 240h transit. The 简体中文 version of the same NIA notice names it as 西九龙站 (rail), and the co-location border-control arrangement at WKL means a traveler who exits via HSR from Futian / Shenzhen North into West Kowloon clears Chinese exit immigration inside the Futian station itself — the exit stamp is dated and recorded against the 240h window. We've verified this with travelers who have done it in 2025.

Do Hong Kong / Macau / Taiwan count as "third regions"?

NIA English text: The policy requires entering from one country/region and exiting to a "different country/region". HK, Macau, and Taiwan are politically part of China but administratively distinct with separate immigration regimes.

What we ship: Yes, all three count as different "regions" for the third-region requirement. This is consistent with the 144-hour predecessor policy interpretation, multiple embassy advisories, and airline check-in counter practice. We carry separate exit-handling logic for HK/Macau/Taiwan in src/lib/evaluate.js.