Originally Posted by
jiejie
Not exactly. You must be going from one country through China to ANOTHER country. If you would read the second Sticky at the top of this Forum, it will make Transit Without Visa clear. HKG-PVG-HKG is not an international transit. HKG-PVG-ICN is.
But if your itinerary qualifies, then as long as your passport is on the Favored List you can have up to 48 hours. Note that's not defined as "return to the airport" but is time gap between scheduled inbound arrival and scheduled outbound departure. To see if your passport gets 48 hours, again, this information is in the aforementioned Sticky. All Non-favored passports get standard 24 hours.
As stated by someone else above, you have NO option to stay airside without going through immigration, whether entering on a visa or whether doing international Transit Without Visa.
Well, HKG was trated as a separate country and after going thru the first customs queue, I was escorted to a separate desk, which the office spent about a minute looking something up and then stamped my passport with a Stay Permit, good thru the day of my departing flight (which was the next day). The hotel had never heard of this, so it took them a bit to find the visa, but they eventually did and were fine. AA in Boston check in was also aware of the rule and had not problem, although it took a while for the AAgent to type everything into my record, which almost caused my bag to miss the check-in cutoff, but everything turned out to be fine.