Bringing a pet to China: 30 days of quarantine, three exits

A dog or cat arriving in China with its owner faces 30 days in a quarantine facility, unless one of three conditions is met. The conditions sit in a single customs notice from 2019 that is still the operative rule in November 2026, and its most misread part is this: the list of 19 “designated” places is not a permission list. A pet from a country that is not on it can still walk out of the airport the same day, provided its owner carries a rabies antibody test.

The notice is General Administration of Customs Announcement No. 5 of 2019, issued 2 January 2019 and in force from 1 May 2019 (full text, gov.cn, checked 15 November 2026). It runs to four operative paragraphs. Almost everything a reader needs sits in the annexes and in three lists the notice says customs will publish separately.

One person, one dog or cat, one trip

Only dogs and cats count as pets for this route, and each traveller may bring one per entry. The first paragraph limits accompanied live animals to dogs or cats and sets the cap at one animal per person per trip (Announcement No. 5, 2 January 2019). Two adults travelling together can therefore arrive with two animals; a second trip is a second allowance.

The same paragraph makes three documents baseline for every pet: an official animal health certificate from the exporting country’s veterinary authority, a rabies vaccination certificate, and a microchip. These are not waived for anyone. What the three exemption lanes waive is the quarantine, not the paperwork.

Pets outside those two species have no lane here. A rabbit, a bird or a hamster is not covered by the accompanied-pet rule, and the notice does not say what happens to them.

The default is 30 days in a customs facility

Pets that do not qualify for an exemption are held for 30 days at a facility designated by customs, with the detention period counted inside the 30 days. Paragraph two sets the period and adds that pets needing quarantine must enter through a port that has quarantine facilities (Announcement No. 5, 2 January 2019).

During those 30 days the animal stays inside. A customs answer in People’s Daily’s overseas edition says pets are in principle not allowed out of the quarantine site, that customs must notify the owner if the animal’s health changes, and that a vet may enter a designated area on request, with customs supervising any treatment that cannot be done on site (People’s Daily overseas edition, customs Q&A, 16 July 2022).

The notice does not say what starts the clock. “Detention counted inside” implies the 30 days run from when customs takes the animal rather than from when it reaches the facility, but the text does not define the start.

Three lanes out of quarantine

Three situations remove the 30 days. Each still requires the microchip and the two certificates.

The third lane has a repair clause: an assistance dog that lacks only the vaccination certificate can be vaccinated at a qualified institution after the owner applies, rather than being turned back (Announcement No. 5, 2 January 2019). No equivalent exists for an ordinary pet missing the same paper.

The 19 places on the list, and who is missing from it

The designated list is short: eight European places, six in the Pacific, one in the Caribbean, two Asian states and two Chinese special administrative regions, nineteen in all. The eight European entries are Iceland, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Liechtenstein, Cyprus, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland; the Pacific six are New Zealand, Australia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Hawaii and Guam; the rest are Jamaica, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macao (People’s Daily overseas edition, customs Q&A, 16 July 2022; the same 19 appear in a 2026 Guangzhou customs guide, reproduced here, 31 July 2026).

My count against the European Union’s 27 members: four are on the list (Ireland, Portugal, Sweden, Cyprus) and 23 are not. Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Spain are all absent. The United States appears only as Hawaii and Guam; the mainland, Canada and Mexico are absent.

A pet from Germany needs one extra document, the antibody test, and then skips quarantine like a pet from Sweden. The list decides whether you pay for a lab test, not whether your animal spends a month in a facility.

What the antibody test requires

The test is a blood draw, and its timing rules are the part people get wrong. Customs guidance states the draw must not be earlier than the second rabies vaccination, may fall on the same day, and that the report is valid for one year from the draw; a pet re-vaccinated inside that year keeps the report valid (Guangzhou customs guide, 31 July 2026).

Two consequences follow. A pet vaccinated once, ever, cannot produce a valid report until a second dose is given and the blood drawn. And the report’s one-year life is measured from the draw, not from arrival, so the flight has to land inside that window.

The result must come from a laboratory on a list customs publishes, and the titre must reach 0.5 IU/ml (Announcement No. 5, 2 January 2019). The notice names that list as a separate document rather than printing it, so the lab has to be checked against customs’ list, not against whichever laboratory a vet usually uses.

The 14-day window on the health certificate

The health certificate expires quickly: the clinical examination behind it must happen within the 14 days before arrival. The exporting country’s official veterinarian examines the animal in that window and certifies it shows no sign of the diseases on China’s list for imported animals, rabies included (People’s Daily overseas edition, customs Q&A, 16 July 2022).

The certificate has to carry species and scientific name, sex, coat colour, date of birth or age, the microchip number with its implant date and site, and the result and date of the clinical examination; the Guangzhou guide adds that any alteration makes it invalid, and that a chip implanted after the certificate was issued invalidates the certificate (guide, 31 July 2026).

The two clocks therefore differ by two orders of magnitude. The antibody report is good for 12 months; the health certificate is good for 14 days. A pet can pass the lab requirement in the spring and fail the certificate requirement by booking a flight three weeks after the vet visit.

The microchip is a standard, not just a chip

The chip must meet ISO 11784 and 11785 and carry a 15-digit numeric code a reader can read. A chip outside that standard is not an automatic refusal; the owner is expected to bring a reader that can read it (Guangzhou customs guide, 31 July 2026).

What happens at the port: three outcomes

Customs sorts every arriving pet into one of three outcomes, and the third is not a delay. Paragraph three lists four situations that end in a deadline to take the animal back out, or in destruction: more than the allowance, no valid health or vaccination certificate, a pet that needs quarantine arriving where facilities do not exist, and a pet that fails quarantine (Announcement No. 5, 2 January 2019).

A returned pet leaves with its owner against a detention receipt, within a period customs sets; missing it means the animal is treated as abandoned. The fallback for a pet that fails the rules is a re-export with a deadline, not a wait at the airport.

Ten ports can quarantine, and the 2019 annex lists one facility

Pets that need quarantine must arrive at a port with quarantine facilities, and customs answers give ten. The same ten appear, with the customs office responsible for each, in a 2021 answer attributed to Zhaoqing customs (Zhaoqing municipal government, 22 October 2021) and in a 2022 answer in People’s Daily’s overseas edition (People’s Daily overseas edition, 16 July 2022).

The facility annex tells a smaller story. Announcement No. 108 of 2019 published the approved quarantine sites, and its spreadsheet has one row: the Guangzhou Baiyun airport site, operated by a company, for dogs and cats (Announcement No. 108, 2 July 2019; the annex file).

The two counts measure different things. A port “with quarantine conditions” is one customs lists as able to receive a pet that needs quarantine; an approved site is a facility that passed an inspection, and customs says that list is managed dynamically. I found no reissued list I could open, so anyone planning to quarantine has to confirm with the port that a site is operating now.

The single row also says who charges. The annex names a company as operator, so the 30 days cost a commercial fee set by the site, not a figure either notice prints.

How I checked

I read Announcement No. 5 and No. 108 on gov.cn, which republishes customs texts in full, and downloaded the spreadsheet attached to No. 108 rather than trusting summaries of it. I converted the file and counted its rows directly; there is one data row.

For the two lists the notices delegate to customs — the 19 designated places and the ten ports — I used a 2022 customs answer in People’s Daily’s overseas edition, a 2021 Zhaoqing customs answer and a Guangzhou customs guide republished in July 2026, then compared all three, which agree on both lists. The EU count and the split into eight, six, one, two and two are my arithmetic, dated 15 November 2026.

Every link above returned HTTP 200 on 15 November 2026, two through a proxy and the rest direct.

What I could not check

• The current list of approved quarantine sites. The announcement’s own file is dated July 2019, customs manages the list dynamically, and customs.gov.cn returned a 412 block to my requests.
• The list of laboratories whose antibody results customs accepts. The notice names it as an annex; I did not obtain it, so I cannot say how many labs are on it.
• What the 30 days cost. The annex names a commercial operator and neither notice prints a fee.
• Whether the 30 days run from arrival or from admission to the facility. The notice says only that detention counts inside the 30 days.
• Whether any route exists for a household pet that is not a dog or a cat. The notice limits this route to those two species and says nothing about the others.
• Whether the annex to No. 5, the quarantine requirements document, adds conditions on vaccine timing, such as how long before the blood draw the second dose must be given. I read its content only through customs guides quoting it.