A week in China is the highest-value diligence money can buy in sourcing — and the easiest week to waste. This article is for companies travelling to meet manufacturers in commercial volumes, and covers the entry options, what to arrange before departure, and how to structure the days so you come back with verified suppliers rather than photographs.
One standing caveat: entry rules change frequently, and they differ by nationality and by point of entry. Everything below is a starting point for planning — confirm the current position with the Chinese embassy or consulate for your passport before you book anything.
Option 1: the M visa
The M visa is the standard business visa, issued for commercial and trade activities. The core requirement beyond the usual documents is an invitation letter — from a Chinese business or trade partner, from an authorised Chinese institution, or in the form of a trade fair invitation.
Invitation letters are expected to be detailed: your full name, date of birth and passport number; the purpose of the visit with arrival and departure dates; and the inviter's name, address, contact number, signature and official company stamp. A vague letter is a common reason for delay.
Practical points:
- If you are attending the Canton Fair or another registered event, the fair invitation is usually the cleanest route.
- Apply with time to spare, especially around fair seasons when consulates are busiest.
- Suppliers will normally issue an invitation for a serious buyer — asking for one is also a small test of whether the company is what it claims.
Option 2: visa-free transit, which many buyers overlook
China operates a 240-hour (10-day) visa-free transit policy covering travellers from a long list of countries, including Ukraine. It permits entry through a wide network of ports and travel within a large number of provinces, on one condition: you must be genuinely transiting to a third country or region, with an onward ticket to prove it.
For a buyer whose itinerary already routes through a third country, this can remove the visa step entirely for a ten-day trip — enough for a fair plus several factory visits. Two cautions: the transit rules restrict which areas you may travel in, and the onward-journey requirement is real, not a formality.
Separately, Hainan province operates a 30-day visa-free regime for a long list of nationalities, Ukraine among them, which is relevant only if your business is there.
Citizens of Kazakhstan benefit from a mutual visa exemption with China, permitting stays of up to 30 days, with cumulative stays capped within a rolling period — the most straightforward position of any of these options.
Before you fly
- Confirm who you are meeting and where. Get the plant address, not just the company name, and check it against the company's registration — the checks are in our factory verification protocol.
- Cluster your route. Two or three factories a day is realistic inside one cluster; crossing provinces daily is not. Plan geographically using the map of manufacturing clusters.
- Book an interpreter, ideally independent of the factories — see working through an interpreter.
- Prepare the paperwork you will need on site: specification, drawings, target volumes, an inspection checklist, samples of what you currently buy.
- Sort payments and connectivity. Mobile payment is dominant in China; foreign cards now link to the main apps, but set this up before departure rather than at a taxi rank. Arrange a data plan or local SIM, and understand that your usual services may not be reachable.
- Book hotels early around fair dates, when Guangzhou fills completely.
Structuring the week
A productive week has a shape:
- Day 1 — arrival and orientation. Do not schedule a serious meeting straight off a long flight.
- Days 2–4 — factory visits, two or three a day, inside one cluster. Leave slack for travel between plants; it always takes longer than the map suggests.
- Day 5 — a fair or market day if the calendar allows, for discovery rather than decisions.
- Day 6 — the return visit. Go back to the strongest candidate a second time, unannounced if possible. The second visit tells you far more than the first.
What to actually look at on site
- Is this their plant? Signage, business licence on the wall, the name on the gate matching the contract entity.
- The line that would make your product — running, with product on it, not a demonstration corner.
- Capacity in context. Machines, shifts, workers present, and what else is in production. A plant fully committed to another customer's order is a scheduling risk regardless of its capability.
- The QC area. Whether inspection exists as a function, with records — and whether anyone can show you last month's defect data.
- Warehouse and materials. What raw material is on site tells you whether they buy the grade they quote.
- Tooling storage, if you own moulds or will — see tooling cost and ownership.
- The people. Whether you meet engineers or only sales staff is one of the more reliable signals about what kind of supplier this is.
Common mistakes
- Only meeting sales offices. A city-centre office is not a factory, and the distinction is in factory or trader.
- Letting the supplier organise your whole trip. You will see what they want you to see; hotels and drivers arranged by the seller shape the week.
- Scheduling too much. Four rushed visits teach you less than two thorough ones.
- Travelling around Chinese holidays. Plants are shut or running skeleton crews — see China's holidays and production shutdowns.
- Not writing it up the same evening. By day four, factories blur. Notes and photographs, tagged by company, the same day.
The point of flying to China is not to be shown a factory. It is to see the parts nobody would think to show you — the QC records, the material store, the line running someone else's order on the day you were promised capacity.
Making a trip produce verified suppliers
We plan trips around the cluster and the calendar, pre-verify companies before you meet them, accompany visits with our own staff for language and technical questions, and turn the week into a shortlist with comparable quotes and inspection-ready specifications. Seven years, 3,500+ deliveries, 340+ verified suppliers — real projects in our case studies.
See business tours to China or supplier verification.
