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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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German here. I had to go through a 3-month process with multiple, personal visits to the Chinese embassy in Frankfurt to be allowed one-time entry to China for a couple of days. Visa fee was 120€, IIRC.
Well, it's China, a country known for its heavy surveillance. They're not gonna let anyone in just like that.
Yeah. I heard I even got preferential treatment because I got invited by my cousin's wife's family to attend the wedding.
Also the roaming fees were insane. I still have the pricing information message:
Translation: Welcome to China! Here, you can receive calls for 1.59€ per minute + possibly at least 0.50€ per minute (depending on carrier), send text messages for 0.59€ and receive text for free. Data roaming for 12.29€ PER MEGABYTE (automatically capped at 59.50€ per month) may be possible. Good travels wishes o2.
This means they estimated that 60€ was the cutoff before people that rack up MBs without thinking about roaming fees start seriously complaining when seeing the bill.
Huh, according to another reply, German passports are supposed to be more powerful than a US passport. Maybe that's not taking into account visa requirements though. No idea if a US passport would have the same issue with China either. Thanks for sharing your experience!
China probably isn't on the list for visa-on-arrival for any country. Whether the process and the attached fees differ according to where your passport is from, I don't know. I assume that is the case tho.