Can you just fly in?

The official wording lists the permitted purposes as 经商、旅游观光、探亲访友、交流访问、过境 — business, tourism, visiting family or friends, exchanges, and transit. The FAQ additionally allows sporting events, exhibitions and study camps. Work, study and journalism are explicitly excluded. Medical treatment is neither listed nor excluded.

Here is why that silence probably matters: when China set up the separate Hainan regional visa-free scheme, the official announcement did list "medical" as a permitted purpose, in writing. The authorities write it down when they mean to include it. The nationwide 30-day scheme does not.

Every site telling you "visa-free covers medical trips to China" is a commercial operator, and not one of them can point to an official source. Several of them are the same sites publishing the wrong country count.

A new State Council regulation on entry and exit administration (《国务院关于出境入境管理的规定》) takes effect on 2026-09-15. Under it, providing false material or making a false statement when applying for entry can result in a decision barring you from entering China for one to five years.

So the standard industry workaround — "just say you're here as a tourist" — has stopped being a small risk and become a large one. I am not going to advise you to do it, and you should be suspicious of anyone who does.

What I would actually do: a trip that is genuinely tourism with a dental appointment in it is a different thing from a trip whose sole purpose is surgery, and only you know which yours is. If yours is the second kind, ask the authorities directly rather than guessing — the immigration hotline is 12367, and your nearest Chinese embassy or consulate can answer in writing. Get the answer from them, keep it, and travel on that. If you get a written answer either way, I would genuinely like to see it — it would help every reader of this page.