Registering where you sleep: the 24-hour rule, explained properly
Last verified: 2026-08-28
Every foreign visitor has to be registered with the police within 24 hours of arrival. Hotels do it for you. Everywhere else, it is your job — and it is the most common mistake first-timers make.
Who does it for you, and who does not
Check into a hotel or a licensed serviced apartment and registration happens invisibly: they take your passport at the desk, file the record with the police, and you are done. This is the single strongest practical argument for a licensed property on a first landing — the paperwork simply never becomes your problem.
Stay in a private flat, a homestay, or with friends, and the obligation lands on you (or on the person putting you up): the registration has to be made within 24 hours of arrival. It applies whether you are here for three nights or three months, and it resets every time you re-enter the country.
How to actually do it in Shanghai
Shanghai runs its own online self-declaration service, through the city police’s exit-entry portal rather than the national app. It is free, filed on the spot, and — unusually — the interface is offered in English, Japanese and Korean as well as Chinese. Link below.
The in-person route always works too: the neighbourhood police station (派出所) covering your address, with your passport, your visa or entry stamp, and the address details. If your host is doing it for you, ask them to confirm it is done rather than assuming — the record is in your name, not theirs.
One more correction worth making, because English guides repeat it: the 24-hour deadline applies to foreign nationals everywhere in China, city or countryside. The 72-hour version you may read about applies to residents of Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan staying with relatives, and to Chinese citizens settled abroad — not to you.
What actually goes wrong
The failure mode is rarely a fine on the spot. It is friction later: registration records are what other processes lean on — extending a stay, some bank and phone formalities, anything that asks where you live. Turning up without one turns a ten-minute errand into a week of backtracking.
Two habits make it a non-issue. Keep a photo of the registration slip or the online confirmation on your phone alongside your passport scan. And when you change address mid-trip — moving from a hotel into a flat, say — register again for the new address.