Using an eSIM in China: what the official pages say

Two products share the name eSIM in China, and they obey different rules.

A mainland eSIM is an ordinary phone number written into the handset’s chip. Calls, texts, data and international roaming work as they do on a plastic card, plans and tariffs are identical, and moving an existing number from a physical card to an eSIM is free for now (China Mobile eSIM notice, read 2026-10-12). It runs only on phones sold in mainland China, and it is opened at a carrier counter.

An international travel eSIM is a data plan issued by a carrier outside the mainland. Apple’s China mainland page states the constraint: eSIMs from non-mainland carriers cannot be installed while the phone is located in mainland China, and location services have to be on to activate a travel profile abroad (Apple, published 9 September 2026). For a visitor that means one thing: the profile goes on the phone before the flight.

The buying channels and filed prices for physical SIMs are in an earlier note on getting a number. This one covers eSIM and data.

What a mainland eSIM requires

The three carriers were cleared by the industry ministry for eSIM phone service in October 2025 and put it on sale nationwide (Xinhua, 14 October 2025). China Telecom confirmed the service in all 31 provincial-level regions; China Unicom said it had adapted 75 terminal models across phones, watches and tablets; and during the trial none of the three opened online activation, so the phone goes to a store (CCTV, 15 October 2025).

The two carrier pages I could open, both read on 2026-10-12:

Both pages still carry trial wording — 商用试验阶段 on China Mobile’s, and on China Unicom’s both 商用试验阶段 and, in its answers, 试商用阶段 — a year after the launch. Both also bill an eSIM on their existing mobile plans; the billing side of holding a mainland number is in an earlier note on mobile bills and plans.

Whose documents the counter accepts

The same China Unicom page answers the question most visitors ask. Its list of documents accepted for real-name registration is: mainland identity card — the page spells out that this means the second-generation mainland ID or the foreign permanent resident ID card — passport, the Home Return Permits for Hong Kong and Macao residents, the Taiwan residents’ travel permit, the residence permits for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents, the household register, military identity documents and armed-police identity documents, the list closing with “and others”. Driving licences are not accepted, and the page adds that the local hall decides the exact document types (China Unicom eSIM business, read 2026-10-12). It also names three groups it turns away: special users, anyone already at the five-card cap, and anyone whose real-name check fails.

The rule behind the counter comes from a 2013 ministry order that is still in force: a number is not connected until valid identification is shown, and a foreign citizen’s passport is one of the accepted documents (MIIT Order No. 25, issued 2013-07-16, articles 6 and 7). A 2016 notice sets the cap at five numbers per user per carrier nationwide (MIIT notice, 2016-11-07).

A passport therefore appears on a carrier’s own document list. No page I could open says whether a visitor with no mainland address can open a prepaid eSIM, and none publishes a price for one.

Which phones are on the lists

Three Apple support pages, all updated in September 2026, give three different answers about which iPhones take a mainland eSIM.

Apple states the origin rule on two of the three pages: models bought outside mainland China cannot install an eSIM profile from a mainland carrier (Apple, 9 September 2026), and an eSIM from a mainland carrier cannot be used on a device bought outside the mainland (Apple, 17 September 2026). The carrier-list page supplies the route rather than the origin rule: the phone goes to a China Mobile, China Telecom or China Unicom store for ID check and activation (Apple, 15 September 2026).

The carriers’ lists are longer, and they cover mainland handsets only, since those are the devices that can take a mainland profile. China Unicom names four Apple models beyond the Air plus Android devices from six brands: Huawei (Mate 80 RS Ultimate Design, Pura 90 Pro Max, Pura X Max, Pura X Max Collector’s Edition, Pura X View, Mate XT 2 Ultimate Design, the Mate 90 series), Honor (Magic8 Pro Air, Magic9 Pro Max), Samsung (Galaxy S26, S26+, S26 Ultra, Z Fold8 Ultra, Z Fold8, Z Flip8), OPPO (Find X9 Pro satellite-communication edition, Find X9 Ultra eSIM satellite-communication edition), vivo (X500 Pro Max and its satellite version, X500 Pro) and Lenovo (Legion Y70, new generation); the page says the list covers every brand and model that holds a network access licence and is updated as models ship (China Unicom eSIM business, read 2026-10-12). China Mobile’s notice, read the same day, still lists one model: the mainland iPhone Air, A3518.

China Telecom’s own eSIM page would not render for me, so its list is missing here. A Xinhua client report on 20 April 2026 put its total at 11 supported models after Huawei’s Pura 90 Pro Max, Pura X Max and Pura X Max Collector’s Edition joined; that is a single source and I could not check it against the carrier (Xinhua client, 20 April 2026, single source, unverified).

Roaming and travel data, from the carriers’ own pages

The pattern in these pages is consistent. Roaming keeps your home number and bills your home carrier; a travel eSIM is a data plan, so calls and texts either do not work at all (Vodafone) or are billed separately from the data (EE). Apple puts the same in one line: international roaming with an eSIM works the same as roaming with a physical SIM (Apple, 17 September 2026).

Two limits matter on a phone bought in China. It holds at most two eSIM profiles, so a travel eSIM loaded abroad means deleting one of the two; reinstalling a deleted mainland profile has to be done at a carrier store afterwards (Apple, 9 September 2026).

Why the profile has to be installed before arrival

The policy reason is published. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a research institute under the industry ministry, wrote in its eSIM report that activating a foreign carrier’s SIM remotely inside China is suspected unlicensed telecom operation by that carrier on Chinese territory and takes the card outside the country’s real-name registration system, adding that it complicates the fight against telecom fraud, and called for tighter management of remote downloads and activations of foreign profiles (CAICT, eSIM report 2025, PDF; the report text is in Chinese, dated April 2025 and posted to CAICT’s English research library in September 2025). The same report puts worldwide travel-eSIM sales at 326 million US dollars in 2023 and forecasts 734 million by 2030, a 12.36% compound annual rate, on QYResearch figures it cites.

Where the pages disagree

• Apple’s own model lists. The September 2026 pages give five models, four models, and one model. The registration and activation method also differs inside Apple: two carriers support digital assignment at purchase for mainland service, while all three support QR or app methods (Apple, 15 September 2026).
• China Mobile’s list against its own announcement. Its notice, read 2026-10-12, names only the iPhone Air A3518; technology coverage on 14 September 2026 reported the company had opened eSIM service for the mainland iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max and Duo (ZOL, 14 September 2026). I read the announcement through a technology site, not a carrier page.
• Whether a roaming pass exists. EE sells none for China. T-Mobile lists China among the destinations where a qualifying plan works on arrival. Both are the carriers’ own words.
• The same plan, different numbers. Vodafone prices its China plans in the visitor’s region currency: $13, $19 and $24 in US dollars; €11, €16 and €27 on the European view, where the 10 GB plan carries the 25% offer. Both read 2026-10-12.

How I checked

Carrier pages for China Mobile and China Unicom, three Apple support pages, the Xinhua and CCTV reports of the October 2025 launch, the 2013 registration order and the 2016 five-card notice, one CAICT report, and five carrier pages outside the mainland. Read dates sit on every figure; the two mainland carrier pages and the foreign roaming pages were read on 2026-10-12.

T-Mobile refused every route I tried with browser headers — proxy, direct, headless browser, and an outside extractor — so its row rests on one extraction of the same page made earlier the same day. China Telecom’s site, its eSIM page included, returned HTTP 412 to every request I made with browser headers, through a proxy and direct, and served an empty document to a headless browser; 412 is a block, not a dead page, so its terms are absent rather than contradicted.

What I could not check

• China Telecom’s device list and terms. Its page would not render, so all three of its statements above come from news reports, not from the carrier.
• Whether a visitor can open a mainland eSIM. A passport appears on China Unicom’s accepted-document list, and the same page says the local hall decides the accepted types. No carrier page states whether an address, a residence permit or a bank account is required for the eSIM product, and I have no account to test.
• Prices for a prepaid mainland eSIM. No carrier page I could open publishes them; both say the tariff matches existing mobile plans and point to a hotline or a hall.
• The 11-model count for China Telecom. Single source, a news app report, and the carrier page that would confirm it is unreachable.
• Whether the trial has ended. Both carrier pages still say trial stage as of 2026-10-12, and no ministry notice ending or extending it has crossed my searches.
• T-Mobile’s page, from this machine. Every route I tried today (proxy, direct, headless browser, an outside extractor) was refused with 403, so that row rests on a text-extraction read of the same page made earlier on 2026-10-12, not on a load I performed.
• How a data-only travel profile behaves in the mainland in practice. Apple and CAICT state the installation rule; neither publishes what happens to a profile already installed. I did not travel with one to find out.