Shanghai government website.

http://www.shanghai.gov.cn/shanghai/...22ai70129.html

I wish I had known about this website earlier. The Chinese consulate sites in the USA that I've checked tend to contain visa information that hasn't been updated in several years.

Typical. Which is why I never advise people to put much stock in these Consulate sites, at least not without cross-checking information from up to date, independent sources. It's just very difficult to make First World residents believe that official Chinese government sites could be so wrong, and they would care so little that they don't make relevant updates.

Of course, it could be that the arms of the Chinese government know deep-down that nobody ever believes what they say, anyway.

Maybe access to the consulate sites is being blocked by the GFW?

What?! The responsibility for keeping Consulate and Embassy sites updated should belong to a specific person/group located in every country that has one or more Chinese missions. That's because normally a native of that country would be needed to produce the language translation for the many countries that don't use English or one of the common foreign languages as their local lingo. The GFW would have no bearing on this. Chinese government sends them communique on the official changes affecting any or all nationalities, websites around the world get altered accordingly. Not rocket science to appoint someone to spend an hour or so, once a week, to do this.

Even if the management and updating of all worldwide Chinese missions' websites were done from within China, I assure you that approved arms of the Chinese government are able to get around the GFW and do whatever they want. Why, there's an entire huge group down in Shanghai making great sport of hacking and playing with foreign government and corporate websites---perhaps about half-dozen of those guys could be redeployed to updating all the Chinese Embassy websites?!

Someone please help me extract my tongue from my cheeks!