Driving in China on a foreign licence: three routes, one dead end

An International Driving Permit is not a licence in China. The traffic police in Beijing put it in one sentence: China has not joined the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, so an IDP cannot be used to drive on the mainland and cannot be exchanged for a Chinese licence either (Beijing traffic police, answered 2026-07-09).

Two routes remain. One is a temporary driving permit, meant for a stay of weeks or months. The other is an exchange: hand in the foreign licence, sit one written test, and leave with a Chinese licence that lasts six years. The rules for both sit in the same regulation, Order No. 172 of the Ministry of Public Security, in force since 2025-01-01. Figures below were read on 2026-10-29.

The exchange: 90 days of residence is the real threshold

Article 20 sets two conditions, and the second one catches people who already hold a licence:

持有境外机动车驾驶证，符合本规定的申请条件，且取得该驾驶证时在核发国家或者地区一年内累计居留九十日以上的，可以申请对应准驾车型的机动车驾驶证。

Translated: you hold a foreign licence, you meet the other conditions in the regulation, and at the time that licence was issued you had spent at least 90 days in the issuing country or region within one year. The 90 days accumulate; they do not have to be consecutive.

This is the clause that decides whether a licence bought on a two-week holiday is exchangeable. It is not. A licence earned while actually living in the country is.

Applicants for a large bus, heavy trailer or medium bus licence need more: two years on the corresponding foreign licence (Article 20, second sentence).

The regulation defines what counts as a foreign licence in its supplementary provisions. It means a full driving licence issued by a foreign country, Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan. Learner licences, temporary licences and probationary licences do not count.

What you hand in

Article 25 lists the documents for a foreign licence holder:

• identity document
• a medical certificate of fitness to drive
• the foreign licence itself
• where the licence is not in Chinese, a Chinese translation prepared by a translation agency or notarised by a notary office

The identity document has its own requirements, and a city government answer spells them out: a valid passport, a visa, stay permit or residence permit with a stay period of more than three months, and a registration-of-residence certificate issued by the police — or a Foreign Permanent Resident ID Card instead of the passport route (Suzhou municipal government, answer dated 2025-05). A tourist entry with weeks left on it does not satisfy the “more than three months” line.

For the medical certificate, the same answer says to look up a hospital with driving-test medical qualifications in the 12123 app. Article 28 lets the vehicle office skip the paper certificate where it can already check the record with the hospital online.

Where to apply is Article 22(4): a foreign national applies at the vehicle office in the place of residence or habitual residence.

One written test, and a language choice

Article 37 is short. A foreign licence holder applying for a Chinese licence takes Subject 1. Anyone applying for a large bus, heavy trailer, city bus, medium bus or large truck licence takes Subjects 1, 2 and 3.

Subject 1 is the theory paper: road rules, signals, penalty points, accident handling, licensing rules. It is scored out of 100, and 90 passes (Article 38). There is no practical test for a car licence.

The paper can be taken in a language other than Chinese. Suzhou’s answer says a translator may not come into the exam room, but applicants for a car licence may choose English, French, Russian or another language the local system offers. How many languages a given city has loaded is a local fact, not a national one.

Article 45 gives three years from acceptance to finish the test. Miss it and the process restarts.

Six years, then ten, then permanent

Article 13 sets licence validity at six years, ten years or permanent. Article 62 explains how the clock moves: keep a clean record — no 12-point cycle — through the six years and the renewal is for ten; keep it clean through those ten and the renewal is permanent.

Renewal is due within 90 days before expiry (Article 63), at the issuing office or any other vehicle office.

The licence fee is 10 yuan per card, set nationally in 发改价格〔2004〕2831号. The exam fee is separate and each province sets its own.

The temporary permit: no test, 3 months

Article 21 covers the short route. A foreign licence holder who needs to drive temporarily applies for a temporary driving permit. A short stay gets three months. A stay longer than three months can have the permit extended to one year.

Beijing’s service guide for the permit (updated 2026-01-04) shows what that costs in paperwork:

The class of vehicle on the permit follows the foreign licence, with one limit: someone driving a rented Chinese car gets C1 or C2 only. Someone driving a vehicle brought in temporarily gets the class that matches that vehicle (Beijing guide, section 6).

Points work differently here. Reach 12 points in one scoring cycle and the permit is cancelled; skip the required study and test and you cannot apply for a Chinese licence or another temporary permit (Article 21, third paragraph).

One local difference worth checking before you go: some city guides set a deadline counted from entry for filing the application, and Beijing’s guide does not print one. Ask the vehicle office in the city where you will drive.

Two nationalities skip the test entirely

Beijing’s guide names two reciprocal arrangements. Holders of a French licence in classes AM, A1, A2, A, B, BE, C1, C1E, C, CE, D1, D1E, D or DE, and holders of 14 classes of Serbian licence, may apply for a temporary permit of up to one year with no medical check, no training and no test, provided their stay in China is not longer than a year. For French licences, the C1 and C2 classes on the resulting permit allow rented cars only; the larger classes allow only a vehicle brought in temporarily.

Read that carefully: the arrangement produces a temporary permit, not a Chinese licence.

The sequence in practice

For an exchange, the order that follows the regulation rather than the queue at the counter:

1. Work out the 90-day question first (Article 20). If the licence was issued during a short visit, no amount of paperwork fixes it, and the fallback is a fresh licence from scratch — learner’s permit, Subjects 1 to 3.
2. Get the registration-of-residence certificate from the local police station. It is one of the identity documents, and the vehicle office checks entry and exit records against it (Article 28).
3. Book the medical check at a hospital listed in the 12123 app.
4. Take the passport, residence permit, medical certificate, foreign licence and its Chinese translation to the vehicle office in the district where you live (Article 22).
5. Sit Subject 1. Ask at the counter which languages that city’s system has.
6. Collect the card, then note the expiry: six years from issue.

For the temporary permit the list is shorter and the wait is three working days. The document that takes longest is usually the translation, so get it before the trip if the licence is not in Chinese.

Two smaller decisions sit around this one. If the car is for weekends rather than a daily commute, ride-hailing covers the licence, fare and invoice rules that make a car optional in most Chinese cities. If you are renting a flat, the parking space and whether the compound charges for it are settled in the lease, not afterwards — how renting works here has that part.

Driving without one

The Road Traffic Safety Law sets the penalty in Article 99: driving without a licence brings a fine of 200 to 2,000 yuan, and detention of up to 15 days may be added.

An IDP does not change that calculation. Beijing’s traffic police state plainly that an IDP cannot be used to drive on the mainland, so a driver holding only an IDP sits in the same place as a driver holding nothing.

How I checked this

Every figure was read on 2026-10-29. The regulation text comes from the State Council gazette printing of Order No. 172, which carries both the amendment decision and the consolidated articles; I read the Chinese text and translated the article quoted above myself. The temporary-permit procedure and the two reciprocal arrangements come from the Beijing traffic police service guide, updated 2026-01-04, and from their public answer on International Driving Permits, dated 2026-07-09. The identity-document and language details come from a Suzhou municipal government answer, dated 2025-05. The fee basis is the 2004 pricing notice as republished by the Shanghai government service portal. The penalty comes from the consolidated Road Traffic Safety Law as published by the Beijing municipal government.

What I could not check

• Whether any city counts the 90 days differently. The regulation says “within one year, cumulatively 90 days”. Some local explanations add that the period must include the issue date and that days counted before the issue date do not count. I could not load an official text that states those extra rules.
• How many exam languages each city offers. Suzhou names English, French and Russian. Whether every vehicle office has the same set is not published nationally.
• Whether the residence permit must have a minimum remaining validity at the exchange counter. The identity-document rule asks for a stay period over three months. No text I loaded sets a remaining-validity floor for the exchange itself.
• The exam fee. Provinces set it; I did not collect 31 figures.
• Reciprocal arrangements beyond France and Serbia. Beijing lists those two. Other provinces may list others, and I did not find a national list.