China Visa Invitation Letter for Indians: Types, Who Issues Them and How Long They Take

1. Why the Letter Matters

A China business (M) visa is granted for commercial and trade activities, and the consular officer wants to see who in China you are dealing with. The invitation letter answers that: it is the Chinese party's statement that you are expected, when, where and for what. The Chinese Visa Application Service Centre will not accept an M application without one, and the letter is checked against your passport and your Indian company's cover letter line by line. The full list of papers is in the China business visa documents checklist.

2. The Kinds of Invitation Letter

• Company invitation from a Chinese business you trade with or intend to trade with: a manufacturer, a trading company or an agent registered in mainland China. The usual letter for factory visits and supplier meetings.
• Trade fair organiser's letter from the body that runs an exhibition, such as the China Foreign Trade Centre for the Canton Fair. Accepted in place of a company letter for the fair's dates.
• Letter from a Chinese government body or institution, for official or academic visits; rarely relevant to importers.
• PU letter issued by a provincial Foreign Affairs Office, which was the gatekeeper document during 2020 to 2023 and is explained in section 6.

3. What a Valid Company Invitation Contains

The centre's guidance lists the information an invitation must carry. Treat the list as a form the supplier must fill, not a suggestion.

1. About you: full name exactly as printed in the passport, gender, date of birth, passport number.
2. About the visit: purpose (for example "to inspect production and negotiate a purchase contract"), the planned arrival and departure dates, the cities to be visited, the relationship between the applicant's company and the inviter, and which party bears the costs of travel, accommodation and medical care.
3. About the inviter: the company's registered Chinese name and its English name, address, telephone, the official company seal (the red chop) and the signature and printed name of the legal representative or an authorised person, with the date.

A letter in Chinese with an English version is ideal; a letter in English only is accepted for M applications. The seal is what makes the document official in China; a letter without it is a draft.

4. How to Ask a Supplier for One

Suppliers issue these letters routinely, and the delay is almost always on the information side. Send the supplier a single message with everything the letter must contain, in the order above, and a scan of the passport's photo page so the name is copied rather than retyped. Ask for the letter as a PDF of the stamped original. When it arrives, check it against the passport before it goes anywhere near the file: a missing middle name or a transposed passport digit is the most common reason a file is returned at the counter.

Where a supplier relationship is new and the supplier hesitates, a short note explaining that the letter carries no legal liability for your conduct in China, only a statement of the business purpose, usually resolves it. An inviter who still refuses is a signal worth noting about the supplier, as the supplier verification guide discusses.

5. Trade Fair Organiser Letters

For the Canton Fair, the organiser's letter is generated in the Buyer Service System after your company is registered as a buyer; it carries the China Foreign Trade Centre's seal and lists each delegate with passport number. It is accepted by the centres in India for the session's dates. The step-by-step process, timing and download problems are covered in the Canton Fair invitation letter guide. Other large fairs (the Yiwu Commodities Fair, the Shanghai machinery shows) issue letters through their registration systems in a similar way; check the fair's buyer pages for the procedure and the lead time.

6. The PU Letter, Then and Now

Between 2020 and early 2023, business travellers to China needed an invitation letter issued or endorsed by the Foreign Affairs Office of the province they were visiting, known from its form code as the PU letter, and the Chinese partner had to apply for it on the traveller's behalf. That requirement was withdrawn as entry rules normalised; since then a standard company or organiser invitation has again been sufficient for M visas, and PU letters are not asked for by the centres in India. Articles and agents that still describe the PU letter as compulsory are describing the old rule. If a supplier offers to "apply for your PU", it is usually unnecessary; confirm the current requirement on the centre's site.

7. How Long to Allow

Add the centre's own processing time once the file is accepted, which the processing time article explains, and the wait for an appointment slot, which lengthens before the Canton Fair sessions. Six weeks before travel is a comfortable start for a first application; the China business visa guide sets out the whole sequence. Our China business visa assistance includes obtaining the letter and checking it against the rest of the file.