File the Digital Arrival Card before you fly

Every foreign national entering mainland China files a Digital Arrival Card. No fee, no agent needed, no reason to leave it to the airport — and the paper forms that still exist at some counters are a fallback you shouldn't plan around.

Where to file it

Three official routes, pick whichever is least annoying:

• the National Immigration Administration website,
• the NIA 12367 app,
• the NIA mini-programs inside WeChat or Alipay.

You'll enter passport details, flight information and your first night's address — one more reason the hotel booking needs to exist first. File it in the same week you book flights, when the flight number and the hotel are both real.

What you get, and where to keep it

The submission produces a QR code. Immigration scans it. That's the whole transaction — provided the QR is findable at the moment it's needed.

Screenshot it, then email yourself a copy. Airport wifi is exactly when you don't want to be logging into anything to retrieve a screenshot, and a phone at 3% battery has ruined this step for somebody on every flight ever landed.

Two things people get wrong

First, treating it like a visa question. The Arrival Card isn't entry permission — visa-free travellers file it too. It's the arrival record; whether you can enter at all is a separate matter, covered in the visa-free guide.

Second, filing it against the wrong arrival leg. If your itinerary lands in Shanghai before Guangzhou, the card follows your first port of entry into China, not the city you'll sleep in that night. Check which flight actually crosses the border.