Travel to China - visas

[Mammyofonlyone]

I'm hoping for some advice for my husband. He wants to travel to Shanghai for a week in April for work. He has found suitable flights but needs to have a visa to ensure he will definitely be able to go. We aren't envisaging any issues but would like to be certain it'll go ahead before he commits to a few thousand in flights.

As far as he can work out, he needs to go to London to collect his visa from the embassy but the first appt he can get is 14th March, by which point the flights may be fully booked/have significantly gone up in price.

So, a few questions if poss - has he understood the situation properly? If so, what do people normally do in this situation? If anyone more worldly wise than us can advise it would be really useful.

TIA

Hi,
Is your husband actually going to do any work? or just sort of watching how things are done ?

If he is only going for a week, I would just get a simple tourist visa.
Its a sort of "bought" visa so very easy.

Just a booked hotel inventory for the duration, and flight bookings.

I think you need to go to one of the visa centres in the UK to have the application processed as the Chinese authorities now collect biometric data and have done since at least 2018.

I had a tourist visa to China in 2019. I had flight bookings printed and an official invitation letter issued and I think they wanted to see both in the visa centre (Edinburgh).

You might be able to use a visa agent. These companies often have pre booked appointments available for their clients.

Eg Regent Visas.

If it's for business meetings then he needs a business (M) visa (not a tourist visa).

If he's working he needs a work permit which takes much longer but it doesn't sound like that is the case.