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Can You Drive in China on a Foreign Licence? No, and an International Driving Permit Does Not Help

Mainland China does not let you drive on a foreign licence, and the International Driving Permit that works across much of the world is not the answer here either. What you need is a Chinese temporary motor vehicle driving permit, valid for a maximum of twelve months, capped by your permitted stay, not extendable, and usable only on a narrow set of vehicles. This is the rule as the Shanghai traffic police state it in their own English, read on 8 August 2026, plus the translation trap in the official portal itself.

TravelerLocal·
6 min read

Can you drive in China with a foreign driving licence?

No. The rule, in the Shanghai traffic police's own English wording, is that overseas drivers driving in Shanghai must obtain a driving licence of the People's Republic of China or a temporary motor vehicle driving permit. Your home licence is a required supporting document, not a permission to drive. An International Driving Permit does not satisfy that rule either, because the rule asks for a Chinese document and an IDP is not one.

That is the whole trap. The IDP works across most of the world, so people arrive holding one, book a rental, and discover at the counter that the thing they need is a permit issued in China. It cannot be obtained before you land, because it is tied to the entry stamp in your passport.

What is a temporary motor vehicle driving permit?

It is the short-stay instrument, 临时机动车驾驶许可, issued through the vehicle administration system to visitors who hold a valid overseas licence. Applications for Shanghai go through the Temporary Entry Motor Vehicle Driver management service system, run by the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau Traffic Police Corps together with the Ministry of Public Security's Road Traffic Safety Research Centre, at sh.122.gov.cn. The Shanghai municipal government's English portal links to that system as the official channel.

Registration asks for your country of citizenship, passport number, a mobile number and an email address. There is an online learning module in the system as well.

How long is a temporary driving permit valid for?

A maximum of twelve months, and often much less. The official wording sets three limits at once: the permit may not run past the permitted entry period noted on your entry-exit identity document, may not run past the expiry of the overseas licence you hold, and in no case exceeds twelve months. Whichever of the three lands first is your real expiry date.

And it does not renew. The rule states plainly that a temporary permit may not be extended after it expires. If you are on a 30-day visa-free entry, your permit is capped by that stay, not by the twelve-month ceiling — so the headline number is not the number that applies to most visitors.

What are you allowed to drive on it?

A narrow set. The vehicles permitted under a temporary permit are limited to motor vehicles temporarily brought into China, and small cars or small automatic-transmission cars rented in China. That is the official list.

Read it slowly, because the omission matters: a car you borrow from a friend or a relative in China is not a rented car and is not a vehicle you brought in. The permit is written for two situations — you drove your own vehicle across a border, or you hired a car from a rental company — and a private car lent to you falls outside both. Nor does the permit cover large vehicles.

What do you have to carry while driving?

Three documents, together. The permit must be carried on you and used together with your overseas driving licence and its Chinese translation. That is one document more than most people expect, and the translation is not optional decoration — it is named in the rule as part of what makes the permit usable.

Leaving the home licence in a hotel safe defeats the permit. So does having the permit and the licence but no translation.

Can you use the official portal's translation tool as your translation?

No, and this is the sharpest trap on the page. The system does provide an online document-translation tool that will render your licence details into Chinese. Its own notice says the translation is for reference only and cannot be used as application material or as an archival record.

So the tool is useful for understanding the form and useless as the document. Arrange a translation that the vehicle administration office will accept — the office handling your application is who to ask what they accept, and asking before you queue costs nothing.

What about drink-driving?

Treat it as zero. China's blood and breath alcohol thresholds for drivers are fixed by a mandatory national standard, GB 19522-2024 (车辆驾驶人员血液、呼气酒精含量阈值与检验), issued 29 April 2024 and in force since 1 August 2024, administered by the Ministry of Public Security. It replaced the 2010 version, which is now formally superseded — so advice written before August 2024 is citing a repealed standard even when the numbers happen to still be right.

We are not printing the numeric thresholds here, because the official full-text portal serves the standard as a protected document we could not read, and a blood-alcohol limit is exactly the kind of number we will not reproduce from a source we have not checked. What we can say is that China sets its limit far below the levels common in Europe and North America, that the higher tier is a criminal matter rather than a fine, and that a foreign visitor with a criminal traffic conviction has a problem much larger than the trip. One drink at dinner is not a margin here.

Is this the same everywhere in mainland China?

The permit is a national category and the application runs through the provincial vehicle administration system, but the page we read and quoted is Shanghai's. Details that vary locally — where you go, what the office accepts as a translation, how long it takes — are worth confirming with the vehicle administration office in the city you are actually driving in.

Two things this guide does not cover, because we have not verified them: e-bikes and scooters, which are governed differently and inconsistently between cities, and Hong Kong and Macao, which are separate jurisdictions with their own licensing rules and are not "mainland China" for any of the above.

Where to check before you travel

If you have been through this process recently and something above is out of date, tell us — the correction form at the bottom of any city page reaches us directly.

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