Vietnam eVisa for Chinese Citizens

Updated 2026-07-24

Chinese passport holders need a visa before entering mainland Vietnam. For most tourists and short business visitors, the 90-day Vietnam eVisa is the practical route: it is applied for online at evisa.gov.vn, can be single or multiple entry, and must match your passport and selected entry port exactly. This guide is written for mainland Chinese travelers first, with overseas Chinese speakers as a secondary audience. It covers documents, white-background photos, pinyin/name matching, China land-border gates, processing times, payment realities, and how InTimeVisa can help when departure is close.

Do Chinese citizens need a visa for Vietnam?

Yes. China is not on Vietnam's 45-day nationality visa-exemption list, so ordinary Chinese passport holders need a visa for each mainland Vietnam entry. The usual choice is the Vietnam eVisa, issued by the Vietnam Immigration Department through the official government portal evisa.gov.vn.

The eVisa can be valid for up to 90 days, single or multiple entry. It covers normal tourism and short business visits such as meetings, trade fairs, factory visits or negotiations. It is not a work permit and does not authorize local employment in Vietnam.

InTimeVisa is a private visa-assistance service, not the Vietnamese government and not affiliated with it. You can apply yourself at evisa.gov.vn for the government fee alone; our role is document checking, correct submission, monitoring and urgent handling where realistic.

Documents Chinese travelers should prepare

Prepare the files before opening the form. Most avoidable delays come from weak photos, inconsistent names, or selecting a port that does not match the trip.

If you are already on the road, do not rely on a hotel front desk or airport photo booth to solve this at the last minute. A weak phone photo can still pass your own eyes and fail the portal or the officer review. Take the passport page again in indirect daylight and retake the portrait against a plain white wall before paying the non-refundable government fee.

For group travel from China, collect every passport and photo before the first application is lodged. Mixing one old passport scan, one cropped portrait and one changed land-border plan is how a family or tour group ends up with different outcomes on the same departure date.

• Chinese passport valid at least 6 months from the intended entry date; make sure the data page is undamaged and readable
• Clear color photo or scan of the full passport bio page, with all four corners visible and the machine-readable lines at the bottom sharp
• Recent white-background portrait photo, front-facing, no glasses, no hat, JPG/JPEG under the portal size limit
• Travel date, intended entry and exit ports, hotel or Vietnam contact address, and email address for delivery
• If traveling as a family or group, each traveler needs a separate application and each passport/name/photo must be checked separately
• Do not crop the passport to only the text area; the whole bio page gives reviewers context and reduces scan-quality doubts
• If a child has a separate passport, prepare a separate portrait and application for the child rather than attaching the child to a parent file
• Use an email inbox you can open from China and while traveling; amendment notices are easy to miss if they land in spam
• Keep a printed copy of the approved PDF for airline check-in and land-border inspection

Pinyin, name order and passport matching

For Chinese passports, the eVisa form should follow the Latin-letter pinyin printed in the passport, not Chinese characters and not a nickname. Copy the passport data exactly, especially the surname/given-name order and the machine-readable zone at the bottom of the photo page.

A common problem is splitting or reordering names from habit. If the passport prints ZHANG WEI, do not submit Wei Zhang unless the form specifically separates fields that way and the final eVisa still matches the passport. If the passport includes multiple given-name syllables, keep every syllable. A mismatch can cause amendment, refusal, denied boarding or entry trouble.

Chinese names are short, which makes small mistakes look harmless. They are not harmless on an eVisa. The airline and the border officer compare the Latin-letter visa against the passport, not against the Chinese characters you use every day. Treat spaces and syllables as part of the travel document.

If a traveler recently renewed a passport, check that the new passport number and validity dates are used. Do not copy an old visa, an old passport photo stored in WeChat, or a previous travel agency form without checking it against the physical passport in hand.

• Use the Latin pinyin as printed in the passport
• Do not enter Chinese characters into name fields that expect Latin letters
• Check passport number, date of birth, sex and expiry date character by character
• After approval, an incorrect eVisa is generally not editable; the practical fix is a new application and a new government fee

Ports of entry: airports and China land borders

A Vietnam eVisa is valid only at approved checkpoints and only for the ports selected on the application. This matters more for Chinese travelers than for many air-only visitors, because routes from Guangxi or Yunnan often use land borders rather than airports.

Under the current approved-port framework used elsewhere on this site, the main China-facing land gates include Mong Cai in Quang Ninh opposite Dongxing, Huu Nghi in Lang Son opposite Youyiguan, and Lao Cai opposite Hekou. If your itinerary uses another crossing, do not assume it works: confirm the exact Vietnamese gate before submitting.

For air arrivals, the big international airports such as Hanoi (HAN), Ho Chi Minh City (SGN), Da Nang (DAD) and Cam Ranh/Nha Trang (CXR) are normally straightforward, but the selected airport still needs to match the trip.

The Vietnamese side of the gate is what matters on the eVisa form. A traveler may know the Chinese city or crossing name, but the visa application needs the approved Vietnam checkpoint. When in doubt, send the route before submission; changing the plan after approval is harder than selecting correctly first.

Land-border travel also has less tolerance for improvisation than airport travel. If your bus, private car or tour operator changes from one China-Vietnam gate to another, check whether the issued eVisa still matches the gate you will actually use before you leave China.

• Mong Cai / Dongxing: common Guangxi coastal route
• Huu Nghi / Youyiguan: common Nanning-Lang Son-Hanoi route
• Lao Cai / Hekou: common Yunnan-Sapa/Northern Vietnam route
• Wrong or unapproved port can mean denied boarding or refusal at the border
• Confirm the Vietnamese checkpoint name, not only the Chinese checkpoint name
• Check both entry and exit ports if the trip enters by land and leaves by air, or the reverse
• Ask the bus company or tour operator which Vietnam-side gate they actually use on the travel date
• If the route changes after approval, get advice before assuming the issued eVisa still works

Processing time, urgent handling and China time zones

Officially, Vietnam eVisa processing is counted in Vietnamese working days after a complete, paid application is received. In practice, standard cases often take 3-5 working days and can take longer around weekends, Tet and other Vietnamese public holidays.

China is one hour ahead of Vietnam. A file sent late at night China time may not be handled until the next Vietnam working morning. If your flight is close, count working days honestly and do not board with only a receipt or a processing status; airlines need the approved eVisa PDF.

Urgent handling can help when the file is clean and the authority's schedule allows it. It does not mean anyone can guarantee government approval or force a decision. We confirm what is realistic before payment.

The safest planning rule for mainland travelers is to separate three clocks: the time you send documents to the agent, the Vietnam working-day clock after submission, and the airline check-in deadline. Only the approved PDF solves the airline deadline. A quote, receipt, screenshot or promise is not a travel document.

Payment reality for mainland China

The official portal charges the government fee in US dollars: US$25 for single-entry or US$50 for multiple-entry. That fee is paid to the government and is non-refundable after submission, including if the application is refused.

For mainland Chinese customers, PayPal is usually not a practical primary payment route. Until full Alipay or WeChat Pay rails are available through a suitable entity/payment-provider path, our recommended interim workflow is simple: contact us on WeChat, receive a fixed quote, and use the manual payment option we confirm for that case.

A legitimate private agent should always separate the government fee from its own service fee. InTimeVisa is a private agent, not a government website; the official portal remains evisa.gov.vn.

This is also a trust signal. A China-ready workflow should not push a mainland customer into a broken PayPal path and then call the lead lost. The honest interim product is conversation first: WeChat, a written quote, clear fee split, and only then payment instructions.

When Alipay or WeChat Pay is later added, it should be implemented as a real payment rail with receipts, reconciliation and refund handling, not as marketing copy. Until then, the site should say exactly what it can do today.

• Government fee: US$25 single-entry / US$50 multiple-entry, non-refundable
• Agent service fee: quoted separately before you pay
• Mainland-China interim: WeChat quote and manual payment confirmation
• Do not trust sites that hide the fee split or claim to be the government on a non-.gov.vn domain
• Ask for the quote in writing before sending documents beyond the initial check
• Confirm whether the quote includes or excludes the US$25/US$50 government fee
• Confirm what happens if the government returns the file for amendment instead of approving immediately
• Confirm what happens if the government refuses the application after a clean submission

Common refusals and amendments for Chinese applications

Many problem cases are not about nationality; they are ordinary dossier errors. The same mistakes repeat because the eVisa portal relies on exact passport data and photo compliance.

If you receive an amendment request, do not change random fields hoping to satisfy the officer. Read the request, correct the specific image or data field, and then re-check the whole application before resubmitting. A rushed amendment can introduce a new mismatch and send the file back into the queue again.

If the eVisa has already been approved but contains an error, treat it as a serious travel-document problem. Some travelers try to explain small mistakes at check-in or at the border; that is a bad plan, especially on tight land-border itineraries where the operator may not wait while you argue the document.

• White-background portrait is not compliant: glasses, hat, beauty filter, selfie crop, shadow or non-white background
• Passport scan has glare, cropped corners, unreadable machine-readable lines, or the wrong page uploaded
• Pinyin name does not match the passport exactly, or surname/given-name order is inconsistent
• Wrong entry port, especially on China land-border itineraries
• Passport validity is too short for airline/border expectations
• Returned-for-amendment email is missed, causing the file to sit while the flight date approaches

How InTimeVisa helps Chinese travelers

WeChat is the primary contact channel for Simplified Chinese support. Scan the WeChat QR code on our Chinese pages (微信二维码), send your route and departure date, and we will tell you what is realistic before asking for payment. Phone fallback is +84 946 781 706. Zalo is secondary and more useful once you are already in Vietnam.

Our work is controlled and practical: check the passport scan and white-background photo, copy pinyin and passport data accurately, confirm the eVisa port, lodge the application, monitor status, handle amendment requests, and send the approved PDF. We cannot approve visas ourselves and do not represent the Vietnamese government.

For urgent cases, we ask for the same facts first: passport nationality, current location, flight or land-border time, intended port, previous application status if any, and screenshots of any refusal or amendment notice. That lets us distinguish a realistic urgent file from a trip that needs rebooking.

For non-urgent cases, the best value is still prevention: get the photo, pinyin, passport number and port right before submission, because every amendment round consumes working days and every refusal consumes another non-refundable government fee.