In order to drive a car in China you need a mainland driver’s license. International Driving Permits (IDPs) are not recognized by China, neither can you drive using a foreign license for a limited time as in some other countries. Below is my experience obtaining a mainland driver’s license using my Swedish one.

There are other guides on this topic if you Google. Most of the guides are outdated or for T1/more foreigner frequent cities (Hangzhou etc.) so this serves as a guide for Chengdu specifically, though most of it should be the same everywhere.

Good to Know

📣 Language of the Motherland

While you can take the exam itself (more on that later) in English (thank god), be prepared to do everything else in this process in Chinese. As per usual, people do not speak English, will communicate with you in Chinese, and will expect you to understand their native-speed Chinese responses perfectly. It is helpful to pre-study some vocabulary.

♻️ Swapping Your License

It goes without saying that all of this only applies if you already have a currently valid (non-expired) driver’s license from another country. For obtaining a new one from scratch, the process is different.

Note: Despite the official wording being 换 (huàn) and called “exchange”, you get to keep your original license afterward.

🪪 Two Types of Licenses

There are two types of licenses you can get:

  • Temporary 暂时 (zànshí) – this is a one-year license which is less work to obtain
  • Official 正式 (zhèngshì) – harder to obtain, but valid for 6 years

This guide is mostly focused on the official one since that is what I obtained.

⚙️ Transmission

At least for the official license, you also have the option to choose between manual and automatic transmission, which in China is two different licenses, C1 for manual (手动) and C2 for automatic (自动). I was simply asked which one I wanted, and since my Swedish license is valid for and I know how to drive manual, I picked C1, but there was no check to see if I was actually qualified to have it.

🏙️ Residency

There are some basic requirements in order to obtain the license.

For the official one, you need have residency, you cannot be on a tourist visa or similar. Type of residency does not seem to matter, as long as you have a residence permit (居住证). Despite having read online that the temporary license was only available to visitors on short-term visas, at least in Chengdu this does not seem to be the case since 居住证 holders have successfully obtained it, and I was asked point blank at the DMV which of the two I wanted.

🀄️ Chinese Name

Your license will not actually have your Western/passport name anywhere on it, just your Chinese one, so if you haven’t already picked one, now is the time!

Preparation

In order to exchange your foreign license to a official mainland one, you need:

  • Documentation
    • The basic bureaucracy: originals and copies of passport, residence permit, and accommodation registration
    • Translated license: A notarized Chinese translation of your foreign license, and the original license
    • Photos: 1寸 photos on white background
  • Health check: Simple and unobtrusive, but required for the official license
  • Exam: The biggest hurdle to getting the 6-year official license

🎓 Exam

Note: The exam is not required for the temporary 1-year license.

Let’s start with the exam, since realistically this is the part that requires the most preparation work. As a foreign license holder, you do not need to take any driving test, but you need to take a written test with theory questions.

  • The test consists of 100 questions, done on a computer, and you have 45 minutes in total to complete it.
  • There is an English version of the test, you do not need to take it in Chinese.
  • The first 40 or so are true-false questions, the rest are multiple-choice questions with four choices.
  • You need 90/100 correct answers to pass the test.
  • You have two chances – that’s right, if you fail the first time, you can immediately re-take the test.
  • If you still fail the test, you have to come back another day and re-do it.
    • There does not seem to be any blackout period, the wording used was just 改天 (another day)
    • Never investigated this further since I passed on the first attempt 🥰

The test questions are randomly selected from a large bank (1000+) of possible questions. The bank of questions used to be published but isn’t anymore. Exactly how the questions are selected also remains unknown, but there seems to be an emphasis on traffic signs and rules, since very few of the actual test questions turned out to be what I would call the “obscure” ones.

Speaking of obscure, these are the reason you need to study. Maybe half or so of the questions are completely obvious with absolutely zero studies – they are on the form of “you see a red light, what do you do – stop or honk and speed up?” Those questions are not your issue, you can do them in your sleep. Your problem is the non-obvious ones. What distance from a sharp turn are you not allowed to stop, 30 or 50 meters? Is the fine for driving a self-assembled vehicle 200 or 500 yuan? These are what you study for.

I used LaowaiDrive for my studies and can highly recommend it (if only they paid me commission for this 🥹) Also available for iOS. Costs 80 yuan to unlock the full version which you will want to do. Since the question bank isn’t public, there were some questions on my test which were not in the app, but I went through its 1000 questions and at least some 85% of the actual test were identical to the questions in the app. I studied for maybe four-five weeks when I had spare time left over, and got 100/100 in 14 or so minutes. Enough to get an impressed comment from the staff, but in hindsight way more than needed.

💬 Notarized Translation

Besides starting to study up, another thing to do early on (since it takes a couple of days) is getting your foreign license translated into Chinese. This is a requirement for both license types.

Having a notarized translation just means that the company/individual translating your license must be an authorized translator. I found a listing on Taobao with great service for 100 yuan. The Taobao search query would be something like 翻译国外驾照换国内驾驶证.

Upon contacting them (since Swedish is not part of their listing) they informed it could be done, asked where I would use it (they’d done “loads” for Chengdu and said “absolutely no problem”) and my 快递 preferences. Then, after sending me PDFs to check the details (I had to correct some small details in their translation from Swedish), they sent me the stamped (of course, what did you expect) documents with 快递 and gave me the tracking number. Since the 快递 usually takes two or three days to arrive in Chengdu you can do this pretty early on. For the listing linked here, I had zero issues or questions using it at the Chengdu traffic police office.

📸 Photos

Your license will contain a photo of yourself, so you need to bring that. I mistakenly in my Western mindset started looking for a photo booth in a mall or something – but I’m slowly starting to understand that in this country, you should just trust the service economy and communicate, and things work out.

Search your 点评 for 证件照 and find a cheap-looking shop offering 快照, this is the “quick” ID photo option (the non-quick costs 100+ yuan and it involves a beauty makeover for you to look great on your ID, oh, mainland. 😂) My local shop sat me down, informed me that no necklaces or earrings were allowed on the license photos (wouldn’t have known this myself in a photo booth), took my picture, photoshopped it for a few minutes (apparently this is standard), printed out and cut the photos, all for ¥15. I wasn’t sure about the size, 1寸 or 2寸 (turns out it’s 1寸) so got both. It seems some hospitals might require a photo for the health check, mine just took a photo of me on the spot instead.

🩺 Health Check

The health check does not seem to be required for the temporary 1-year license, but not fully sure.

The physical exam (驾照体检) is actually less of a deal than it seems. It consists of the hospital taking (or in my case they just asked) some measurements like your height. There is also a vision inspection where they check your eyesight and color-blindness. It was my first time doing a Chinese vision inspection, and I confusingly read the symbol the doctor was pointing at as “shan” because it looked like 山，but she frustratingly told my lost laowai self to tell her the direction of the “fork”, (左，右，上，下).

There are a bunch of hospitals in Chengdu where you can do the health check, see this Xiaohongshu post for a complete list. The check takes maybe 10 minutes in total and the price everywhere seem to be around ~30 yuan, I paid ¥38.

📃 Bureaucracy

It wouldn’t be a mainland government process without some extra paperwork for the fun of it. You need to bring your original passport (duh) and a passport copy, a copy of your residence permit as well as (this I didn’t know) your original and copied accommodation registration voucher (登记) that you get when you register your residence with the police, since it actually says your full residence address on the license. I didn’t have my 登记 when I first came but only a photo of it on my phone, so they asked me to bring it the second time around (more on that below.)

👮 At the Traffic Police Office

🔎 Finding Xipu, Document Check

Checklist of documents:

  • Passport (original)
  • Passport (photocopy)
  • Residence permit (photocopy)
  • Accommodation registration voucher 登记 (original)
  • Accommodation registration voucher 登记 (photocopy)
  • Foreign license (original)
  • Notarized translation of foreign license (just bring the whole folder with translations and the company certificate)
  • Physical examination certificate
  • 1-inch photos with white background and no hats or ornaments

Now that you have all your documents in order, it is time to head to the traffic police office to properly start the process. In Chengdu, there are many traffic police offices, but you can only exchange foreign licenses at the big official campus next to 犀浦 Xipu Railway Station (otherwise known as Chengdu’s saddest 火车站 used for 都江堰 and 青城山 trains.) Get there with subway line 2 or 6.

The office is called 成都 车管所 and is about five minutes walking from Xipu subway (take exit C or D.) The office is located in a big campus, Baidu map link, you enter from the big entrance on the West end of the campus and then walk towards the campus center to the General Services building. (Don’t do as I did and look blindly at the map and try to enter from the south, it is the road entrance for vehicle inspections.)

Well at the office, say you want to 换外国驾照 and they will do a quick check to see you have all your documents, then send you across the room to say the exact same thing and get a ticket number (B-something.) Then you sit down and wait until you are called to either one of the two “bilingual” service windows. (Though the office seems to have at one officer with very decent English, just expect to do everything in Mandarin always.)

At this point, I was asked if I wanted the temporary 暂时 or the official 正式 license, and whether I wanted a C1 or C2 (手动/自动, automatic/manual transmission, see previous section.)

When your application is submitted, you are done for the day and they will send you back home. They will call you when your application has been processed, usually 1-2 working days, for me they called pretty much exactly 24 hours after I handed the documents in.

🧪 Test Day

After your application has been processed, you will once again embark on the exciting journey to the ends of the Earth, this time to actually do your test. I recommend not going too late, since you will want to take the test on the same day. The office hours for the test is 09:00-11:15 and 13:30-16:00 if I remember correctly. I came around 11 which was a bit of a waste since I timed their two-hour lunch break.

You once again start out at the General Services office by obtaining your B-something ticket number (I just said “换外国驾照，they called me and said my documents were okay”) and they asked if I wanted to take the test today, said yes. The test building is opposite to the General Services building, across the alleyway with trees, on the third floor.

For the test, you stash all your things up front in the testing room and then take the computer test. For details on the test, see the Exam section above. Not much to say here, you do the test, click Submit and are then immediately told your final score on the screen.

After passing the test, you head back to the General Services office and tell them as much. Then you sit down as they actually produce your license on the spot. After a while (they told me 20 minutes, it took more like 10) your Chinese name will pop up on the big screen and you go to booth number 23 to pick it up.

还有什么别的事情啊？

I asked them upon being handed my license in a little leather enclosure. 没有！Now you have your Chinese driver’s license, good for six years of driving!