Transferring 10yr Chinese L Visa to New Passport
 

In late 2014, I applied for and got a ten year "L" tourist visa from the Chinese Consulate in NYC. However, since then the passport containing this visa expired and was replaced. I'd like to have the consulate transfer the visa or re-issue it with the new passport without re-applying which would require me to prove future travel.

Anyone else have any thoughts on this? I can't get in touch with the Consulate, phone is busy 24/7.

Bring your old passport with you during your travels.

India will transfer an old visa to a new passport, but i don't believe China will: your passport number and visa are locked together in their system. As said, you need to carry both the old and new passport. Not sure which one hotels scan, or which one gets the entry stamp.

For India, it is optional. I didn't bother transferring and used to carry two passports (old one with visa and the current one) when I traveled to India.

For China, in the past, they didn't grant visa beyond expiration on the passport. Now that they do with the 10-year visa, I would expect bringing both passports should be fine. If you cannot check with the consulate, you can check with a passport and visa handling agency. (Note that neither the consulate's nor a visa agency's words are final, immigration officer at your port of entry has the final say.)

There's certainly no problem with China. When you get a 10-year visa you usually get a slip that tells you can still use the visa in the old passport after the old passport expires, so long as your new passport has the same name and nationality as your old one.

As others have intimated, the path of least resistance is to carry both passports.

On another forum, someone reported successfully transferring their visa to the new passport.

I got my Visa yesterday and it did have the slip that said to bring this passport when I got a new one. My passport expires in 2022 and the Visa is good until 2026.

^^^

I'm in the same boat. My passport expires next year but my visa is good until 2024, and I'd like to find a way to transfer the visa to my new passport when I get it. I'd carry two passports if it was for 2-3 years but doing it for 70% of the life of the visa just seems silly. Plus, it seems like it would hold up immigration lines to have the officers have to look in two passports. Whenever I go through immigration, I always hand my passport to the officer, open to the visa page, with the visa facing the officer right-side up. Only saves a few seconds but if everyone did this, it would save a few minutes for everyone.

I never thought of this before, but the policy means that if you have a Chinese visa in an expired passport and in the meantime have gotten a secondary passport (for example, from the USA if one passport must often be left with a consulate for visa processing while you travel), the ten year visa would seem to apply equally to both new passports. That's a nice convenience for those with two passports.

I suggest you don't switch between different passports to avoid unnecessary hassle. That wasn't the intention for the secondary passport anyway.

Visas have passport #s on them. New passport, numbers won't match visa.
Plus its impossible to remove a chinese visa from a passport without destroying it. If possible, it would surely get rejected when trying to enter after they scan the passport and visa. Probably would pass the airline boarding.

"Plus its impossible to remove a chinese visa from a passport without destroying it."

That's not what folks mean when talking about "transferring a visa from an old passport to a new one"! It means going to the consulate/embassy and getting a new visa stamp the same as the old one. You can do this for Indian visas, and the cost of transferring the old visa is quite a bit less than the cost of getting a brand-new visa. But whether China does this, I don't know.

HUH? USA authorizes second passports for its citizens who travel often to countries that require visas. The idea is that you travel on one passport while the other one is sitting at a consulate as part of a required visa application for future travel. If this applies to someone, it is the intention of the USA's willingness to issue a second passport.

Second passports where one is ordinary/personal and the other a diplomatic or official passport are a bit different. I suspect that someone should not enter China on a tourist visa with a diplomatic/official passport.