A Bangladeshi passport holder needs a visa for China, and the application is filed in person at the Chinese Visa Application Service Center in Dhaka, at 3rd Floor, Praasad Trade Center, 6 Kemal Ataturk Avenue, Banani. You complete the application form online at visaforchina.cn first, then attend the center. It is open Sunday to Thursday, taking applications and payment from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm and handing back passports from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. The tourist category is the L visa. As of the center’s own notice dated 24 December 2025, short-term visa applicants are exempt from fingerprinting until 31 December 2026.
Two things on this page will save you a wasted trip to Banani, and neither of them appears on the pages currently ranking for this search.
Where the process actually happens
The Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh does not take visa applications over the counter itself. It publishes the visa center’s details, and the center is where you go:
| Detail as published | |
|---|---|
| Center | Chinese Visa Application Service Center in Dhaka |
| Address | 3rd Floor, Praasad Trade Center, 6 Kemal Ataturk Avenue, Banani, Dhaka |
| Phone | 0088-022 2660 3261, weekdays 9:00 am to 4:00 pm |
| dhakacenter@visaforchina.org | |
| Website | visaforchina.cn |
| Days | Sunday to Thursday, holidays notified separately |
| Submission and payment | 9:00 am to 3:00 pm |
| Collection | 9:00 am to 4:00 pm |
Source: the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Bangladesh, on its own contact page, and the center’s Dhaka portal. Checked August 2026.
The order of operations matters. You fill in the application form online first through visaforchina.cn, and only then attend the center. Turning up in Banani with a blank paper form is the most common wasted morning in this process.
The fingerprint exemption, and why it is worth knowing
The Dhaka center published a notice on 24 December 2025 stating that from that point until 31 December 2026, all applicants for short-term visas with a stay of 180 days or less are exempt from fingerprinting. The exception it names: applicants in categories D, J1, Q1, S1, X1 and Z, who need residence permits after entering China, still have fingerprints collected.
A tourist L visa is a short-term visa. So if you are applying for tourism in 2026, this notice applies to you.
This matters for two practical reasons. First, a great many guides and agency pages still state that fingerprint collection is mandatory and that you must appear in person for it. Second, the exemption has a hard end date of 31 December 2026. If you are reading this in 2027, assume it has lapsed unless the center has published an extension. Chinese missions have extended this exemption more than once, but an extension is not automatic and it is not something to assume.
Applying for a China visa for Bangladeshi passport holders: the document question nobody answers straight
Here is the second thing, and it is the reason this page exists.
If you search for China visa requirements in English, a large share of what you will read describes a document simplification: that since 1 January 2024 tourist applicants no longer need to submit a round-trip ticket, a hotel booking, an itinerary or an invitation letter. That is real. It was announced by Chinese missions, and you can read the notice on the websites of the Chinese Embassy in the United States and the Chinese consulates in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Those are notices from Chinese missions in the United States. We looked for an equivalent notice on the Dhaka center’s own portal and on the Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh’s consular pages, and could not find one. Meanwhile, non-official descriptions of the Dhaka center’s L-visa requirements still list confirmed flight bookings, hotel reservations for every night, a day-by-day itinerary and six months of bank statements.
We are not going to tell you which of those is right, because the honest answer is that we could not confirm the Dhaka position from a Dhaka source. What we will tell you is what to do about it:
- Assume the fuller document set until the center tells you otherwise. Prepare the flight booking, the hotel reservations, the itinerary and the bank statements. Being over-prepared costs you an afternoon. Being under-prepared costs you a trip to Banani and a resubmission.
- Email dhakacenter@visaforchina.org and ask for the current L-visa checklist in writing before you go. This is a fifteen-minute step that settles the whole question for your specific application.
- Do not carry over a document list from a US-focused guide. Chinese visa requirements are set mission by mission. The Dhaka center’s checklist is the one that governs you, and no page written for an American audience is a substitute for it.
On the invitation letter specifically: for a genuine tourist trip with your own bookings, an invitation letter has historically been the alternative to the flights-and-hotel evidence, not an additional requirement on top of it. If someone in China is hosting you, their invitation letter is the document that replaces your hotel booking. If you are traveling independently, your own bookings are what stands in its place. Ask the center which they want for your file.
Fees: the schedule everyone is quoting has expired
This is where we part company with every page ranking for this keyword.
The most recent official Chinese visa fee schedule for Bangladesh that we could locate is a notice on the Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh’s own consular pages, headed as an adjustment of consular service fees. It sets fees in Bangladesh taka, and for a Bangladesh passport it lists:
- Single entry: 2,400 taka, rising to 6,400 taka for the fastest delivery
- Double entry: 3,600 to 7,600 taka
- Six-month multiple entry: 4,800 to 8,800 taka
- Twelve or twenty-four month multiple entry: 7,200 to 11,200 taka
It also names three delivery speeds: regular, returned on the fourth working day; express, on the third; and urgent, on the second.
That notice states its own effective period as 11 December 2023 to 31 December 2024. That period has ended. We could not find a successor schedule published on the embassy’s or the center’s English pages.
So when you see “2,400 taka” quoted confidently on a 2026 blog post, understand what you are looking at: a figure copied from a schedule whose stated validity expired more than a year earlier. It may still be the current fee. It may not be. Confirm the fee with the visa center before you go, and expect the payment to be taken at the center at submission time. Note also that the delivery speed you choose changes the fee substantially, and that this fee is the government charge, separate from anything an agency adds.
The passport and photo details that get applications sent back
From the embassy and center material, and worth getting exactly right:
- Passport: valid at least six months from your date of entry into China, with at least two blank visa pages.
- Photograph: this is not a standard passport photo. The specification circulating for the Dhaka center is 48 x 33 mm, white background, matt lab print, with the ears and forehead visible. Do not hand in a 35 x 45 mm photo cut down, and do not use an inkjet print.
- Old passports: if you have held a Chinese visa before, bring the passport it is in.
Confirm the photo size with the center when you email for the checklist. The Chinese visa photo is one of the few in the world that is genuinely a different size from everything else in your drawer, and it is a common reason for a same-day rejection at the counter.
What this page cannot tell you
Whether your application succeeds. Consular decisions are made on the individual file and no guide, agency or center employee can promise an outcome. Do not buy non-refundable flights before the visa is in your passport, and be careful with the “urgent, second working day” delivery option as a way of rescuing a trip you already paid for.
If you are weighing East Asian destinations, the document burden is a real part of the decision. Our guide to the Japan tourist visa for Bangladeshis covers a process built almost entirely around financial documents, and South Korea’s visa for Bangladeshis is another where the paperwork, not the destination, is the hard part. Singapore’s application has to go through an authorized agent, which is a different constraint again. For the Dhaka airport side of the trip once the visa is issued, see our first international trip from Bangladesh checklist.
FAQ
Where do Bangladeshis apply for a China visa?
At the Chinese Visa Application Service Center in Dhaka, 3rd Floor, Praasad Trade Center, 6 Kemal Ataturk Avenue, Banani. You complete the application form online at visaforchina.cn first, then attend the center in person. It is open Sunday to Thursday, with submission and payment from 9:00 am to 3:00 pm.
Do Bangladeshi applicants still have to give fingerprints for a China visa?
Not for short-term visas at present. The Dhaka center published a notice dated 24 December 2025 exempting all applicants for short-term visas of 180 days or less from fingerprinting until 31 December 2026. Applicants in categories D, J1, Q1, S1, X1 and Z who need residence permits are still fingerprinted. Check whether the exemption has been extended if you are applying after that date.
How much does a China tourist visa cost from Bangladesh?
We cannot confirm a current figure. The most recent official fee schedule we found on the Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh’s site lists a Bangladesh-passport single-entry visa at 2,400 taka for regular delivery rising to 6,400 taka for urgent, but that notice states its own effective period as 11 December 2023 to 31 December 2024 and has expired. Confirm the current fee with the visa center before you go.
Do I need an invitation letter for a China tourist visa from Dhaka?
Historically the invitation letter has been the alternative to submitting your own flight and hotel bookings, not an extra requirement on top. Chinese missions in the United States announced in December 2023 that tourist applicants there no longer need tickets, bookings, an itinerary or an invitation letter, but we could not find an equivalent notice from the Dhaka center. Email dhakacenter@visaforchina.org for the current Dhaka checklist rather than relying on a US-focused guide.
How long does the China visa take in Dhaka?
The official fee notice names three delivery speeds: regular, collected on the fourth working day; express, on the third; and urgent, on the second. Those are processing speeds after a complete application is accepted, not a guarantee of the total time from your first attempt.
Checked August 2026. Sources named inline: the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Bangladesh (bd.china-embassy.gov.cn) for the Dhaka visa center’s address, hours, phone, email and website, and for the consular service fee notice whose stated effective period is 11 December 2023 to 31 December 2024; the Chinese Visa Application Service Center Dhaka portal (visaforchina.cn) for the notice dated 24 December 2025 exempting short-term visa applicants from fingerprinting until 31 December 2026 and naming the D, J1, Q1, S1, X1 and Z exceptions; and the notices published by Chinese missions in the United States regarding the January 2024 simplification of tourist visa documents, which are cited here specifically as US-mission notices and not as Dhaka policy. No current Dhaka fee is asserted, because the only official schedule we could find has expired and we found no successor. Chinese visa requirements are set mission by mission and change by notice; the Dhaka center is the authority for a Bangladeshi applicant, not this page. Review interval: 90 days. This is documented process, not immigration advice, and no one can promise an application will be approved.