Shanghai Eastern Hub: Visa-Free Entry for Global Business Travelers Up to 30 Days

Shanghai Eastern Hub is reshaping how global businesses access and collaborate within China’s most connected international gateway. The zone enables seamless business exchanges, cross-border R&D cooperation, professional services, and expanded market access for high-end industries. Its policy innovations position Shanghai as a strategic hub for global companies seeking efficiency, openness, and growth.

On November 28, 2025, China’s General Administration of Customs, together with nine other ministries, officially checked and accepted the Shanghai Eastern Hub International Business Cooperation Zone (Shanghai Eastern Hub) after a comprehensive joint inspection. This milestone marks the launch of China’s first-of-its-kind special function zone, strategically located near Pudong International Airport and the future Shanghai East Railway Station.

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The Shanghai Eastern Hub introduces a groundbreaking policy: foreign nationals invited by registered companies can enter the zone without a Chinese visa and stay for up to 30 days, with extension options available. On-site port visa services will further streamline access for those needing to travel beyond the zone. This initiative reflects China’s commitment to high-level opening-up, offering global businesses a fast-track gateway for cross-border meetings, exhibitions, and training programs.

For foreign investors and multinational enterprises, the zone is more than a convenience – it’s a platform for global connectivity. Designed to support international trade, innovation, and talent exchange, the Eastern Hub positions Shanghai as a pioneer in next-generation economic openness, aligning with global trends in supply chain restructuring and international business engagement.

What is Shanghai Eastern Hub?

In February 2024, China’s State Council approved the Master Plan for Building the Shanghai Eastern Hub International Business Cooperation Zone. The zone is built on the regulatory frameworks of a comprehensive bonded zone, a customs-supervised area, and a port-restricted area. On top of these, it introduces additional policy tools that facilitate the cross-border movement of people within a designated, fully enclosed area. This extends the “first line relaxed, second line controlled” model, traditionally applied to goods, to natural persons for the first time.

The cooperation zone covers a planned area of about 0.88 square kilometers, divided into two sections by the G1503 expressway. The eastern section, approximately 0.44 square kilometers, serves as the pilot launch area. The pilot area now completes enclosure and acceptance procedures, allowing core functions to begin operating. By 2028, the entire zone aims to achieve full closed-loop operations and complete key functional infrastructure. By 2030, the business cooperation zone is slated for full completion.

Positioned as a “globally pioneering and nationally unique” zero-time-difference global business hub, Shanghai Eastern Hub is far more than another transport upgrade. Its core mission is to solve a world-class challenge: enabling the most efficient possible “time-space conversion” of people, goods, information, and capital at a single strategic point in Shanghai.

Why is it considered a national first and the only one of its kind in China?

This is because it establishes a regulatory and operational model that has no comparable precedent in China. Its uniqueness can be understood across three dimensions.

A breakthrough regulatory model enabling the free movement of people

Unlike China’s earlier special zones, such as bonded zones and free trade zones, whose benefits primarily focus on goods under the “first line relaxed, second line controlled” approach, the Shanghai Eastern Hub applies this logic to natural persons for the first time. It effectively creates an enclosed “inside China but treated as outside” area where cross-border mobility is dramatically simplified.

• A relaxed first line: Eligible foreign visitors can enter the zone visa-free and move freely within it for up to 30 days, eliminating the traditional barriers of China’s entry visa system and enabling near-instant mobility.
• A controlled second line: When individuals move from the zone into the rest of the Chinese mainland, they are treated as entering from abroad and must complete the normal immigration and customs procedures.
• Why this is a first: Globally, it is exceptionally rare to find a sovereign jurisdiction that designates a dedicated area for business travelers, granting broad visa-free stays and seamless movement while integrating it directly with a world-class transport hub. The result is a space that is legally within national territory yet endowed with a degree of cross-border convenience typically only available outside the border.

A genuine “zero-time-difference” business environment

The Eastern Hub’s vision is to collapse both physical and procedural time costs. It directly addresses the core pain points of cross-border business: lengthy travel, entry procedures, and institutional friction.

• Physical zero-time difference: Through integrated air-rail connectivity, travel time between major global cities and the Yangtze River Delta’s core destinations is compressed to the minimum achievable window.
• Process zero-time difference: Upon landing at Pudong Airport, visitors can enter the business cooperation zone immediately to attend meetings, join exhibitions, conduct testing, or receive medical services, without first completing China’s standard entry visa and customs processes. Passport and baggage checks are streamlined, postponed, or waived for zone-restricted activities, reducing the practical lead-time for international business from several days (visa processing) to mere hours (flight duration).
• Psychological zero-time difference: The zone is expected to offer internationally aligned business, hospitality, leisure, and professional services, including foreign-invested medical facilities, creating an environment with minimal cultural or institutional friction. Business travelers can transition instantly into work mode.

A comprehensive cross-border business support platform

Rather than functioning as a simple visa-free waiting area, the Shanghai Eastern Hub is designed as an integrated operating system for global business activity. It combines trade, investment, services, and innovation functions into a single, policy-enabled ecosystem.

• Unrestricted goods movement: The zone supports duty-free import of equipment, bonded circulation of goods, and cross-border activities such as R&D, testing, showcasing, and trade.
• Financial and data facilitation: As part of a national strategy, the zone is expected to pilot mechanisms for safer, more efficient cross-border capital flows and compliant cross-border data transfers—critical for multinational operations.
• High-end professional services: The area allows qualified foreign professionals to practice within the zone, enabling companies to access international-standard legal, accounting, consulting, and other business services.

Shanghai Eastern Hub vs. Shanghai Free Trade Zone

Both the Shanghai Eastern Hub and the Shanghai Free Trade Zone (FTZ) are deepening Shanghai’s role as a global gateway, but they are fundamentally different platforms of openness, differing in nature, purpose, policy focus, and the types of advantages they bring to foreign investors and international visitors.

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The Shanghai Eastern Hub, anchored around Shanghai East Railway Station and Pudong International Airport, is conceived as a world-class air-rail interchange. Its core mission is to improve the flow of international and domestic passengers and cargo by integrating aviation, high-speed rail, and metropolitan transit. Unlike traditional transport projects, however, the hub also pilots a unique arrangement of entry–exit control, commonly described as “first line open, second line controlled” for natural persons, as introduced earlier.

By contrast, the Shanghai Free Trade Zone is a long-standing platform for institutional reform, investment liberalization, and regulatory innovation. Comprising several cluster areas, including Waigaoqiao, Lujiazui, Zhangjiang, Jinqiao, and the more recent Lingang New Area, the FTZ focuses on piloting new rules for cross-border trade, financial opening, market access, government administration, and industrial upgrading. Unlike the Eastern Hub, the FTZ does not offer a separate visa-free entry system; instead, it provides streamlined work authorization, enhanced residence convenience for international talent, and supportive policies to attract multinational companies, advanced manufacturers, and innovation-driven sectors.

The two platforms are therefore complementary. The Eastern Hub enhances Shanghai’s role as an international entry point, enabling faster physical movement of people and goods. The FTZ focuses on enabling these flows to translate into sustained business operations, investment activities, and long-term innovation. In practice, an international business delegation may arrive through the Eastern Hub, leverage the visa-free stay to conduct short-term activities, and then proceed to the FTZ to establish operations and benefit from its liberalized institutional frameworks.

 Look ahead: What industries will benefit the most?

The launch of the Shanghai Eastern Hub signals a major step toward enabling seamless cross-border business activities within a strategically located, highly connected environment. With easier entry for international business travelers and a suite of policy innovations across personnel mobility, equipment flows, and cross-border operations, the zone provides a foundation for enterprises to undertake a broad range of activities. From international business exchanges to R&D collaboration and professional services, the zone is positioned as a full-chain platform that supports global expansion and operational upgrading.

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A core advantage for enterprises is the zone’s support for international business engagement. Invited visitors from around the world may enter the zone visa-free, enabling companies to rapidly convene global partners for meetings, negotiations, product launches, and commercial showcases. To further encourage cross-border cooperation, Shanghai’s commerce authorities, authorized by the Ministry of Commerce, can issue administrative approvals for international economic and technological exhibitions. This simplifies the procedures for foreign institutions seeking to independently or jointly organize exhibitions within the zone, strengthening product promotion, demonstration activities, and trade collaboration.

The zone also reduces operational barriers by applying a catalogue-based management system to essential equipment and instruments. Eligible items may enjoy import duty exemptions in accordance with national rules. This benefits companies involved in medical devices, aviation services, precision instruments, and other specialized fields that require sophisticated training equipment. The policy helps enterprises lower costs while advancing talent development and technology adoption.

From an innovative perspective, the zone is designed to become a hub for cross-border R&D and testing. Enterprises may conduct bonded R&D, bonded display and trading, cross-border e-commerce, finance leasing, software testing, and data processing. High-standard R&D facilities are being planned to provide space for industries such as biomedicine, integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, aerospace, and new materials. With convenient international personnel access and duty-free instrument imports, companies can collaborate efficiently with global R&D teams, accelerating technology development, experimental verification, and commercialization. These conditions support a more dynamic environment for cross-border technology exchange and joint innovation.

In the field of international professional services, the zone allows qualified foreign professionals, holding internationally recognized credentials, to provide services in accordance with relevant regulations. This opens new space for accounting, finance, legal, consulting, and testing institutions to operate at a higher level of internationalization. By bringing global expertise closer to enterprises, the zone strengthens both inbound investment and outbound expansion.

Notably, the zone has also been designated as a pilot area for expanded market access in wholly foreign-owned hospitals, marking one of the most forward-leaning breakthroughs in the medical services sector. This allows enterprises to introduce high-level international medical resources and develop premium, globally aligned healthcare services, particularly valuable for executives and frequent cross-border business travelers. The policy not only fills a market gap in international healthcare offerings but also enhances the attractiveness of the zone as a location for multinational operations and talent.

Beyond these areas, the zone also supports offshore trade, services trade, and digital trade, enabling more flexible allocation of global resources. By lowering institutional and operational barriers, the zone provides enterprises with new growth opportunities in emerging cross-border business models.

Taken together, the Shanghai Eastern Hub is evolving into a multi-functional ecosystem that integrates mobility, innovation, professional services, and industry-specific liberalization. Relevant stakeholders are advised to pay close attention to the development of the hub and align strategies and investments to tap into its unique connectivity and policy advantages.

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