The Chinese Embassy in New Delhi issued a notice late on 22 October announcing that all Chinese Visa Application Service Centres (CVASC) in India will cease operations from 26 October 2026. From that date, visa and consular-legalisation applications must be lodged directly with the embassy in New Delhi or the consulate-general in Mumbai. The mission also reiterated exemptions from fingerprint collection for applicants under 14, over 70, diplomatic/official passport holders, or travellers whose prints have been captured within the past five years. China outsourced frontline visa intake in India to the CVASC network in 2008 in a bid to standardise paperwork and outsource queue management. Re-internalising the function reflects two converging trends: Beijing’s global draw-down of third-party visa centres—citing data-security and cost concerns—and a post-pandemic spike in demand that has stretched the private operator’s appointment capacity. For Indian businesses, the shift carries both risk and opportunity. On the plus side, direct filing may shorten processing times once embassy staff ramp up counter hours, and it eliminates the CVASC service fee of INR 1,656 (about USD 20) per application. On the downside, appointment slots are likely to be scarce in the first few weeks, and applicants must now travel to Delhi or Mumbai rather than use regional centres such as Kolkata, Chennai or Hyderabad. Corporations with frequent China travel should schedule visa renewals immediately and consider switching eligible travellers to the 30-day visa-free regime available until 31 December 2026. The embassy’s notice arrives amid a diplomatic thaw following a summer of high-level trade talks. Analysts see the administrative change as a confidence-building measure: by reasserting sovereign control over biometric data and document handling, Beijing signals trust in the bilateral relationship while streamlining a process that had become a bottleneck. Practically, travel managers should update employee guidelines: online forms must still be completed on the CVASC portal, but documents and passports will be submitted to the embassy/consulate. Expect fingerprinting equipment and payment kiosks to be relocated to the diplomatic missions over the weekend of 26–27 October.
