Concerns have recently emerged among Chinese netizens regarding the lengthy verification process for foreign passports on the 12306 ticketing platform, according to a report published on the Chinese government website on October 21.
A Shanghai-based netizen, identified as “Yao,” highlighted the issue, noting that since China introduced short-term visa exemptions for several countries, there has been a significant increase in the number of foreign business travelers. However, purchasing high-speed train tickets for these visitors has proven challenging. The 12306 platform currently requires between three to five working days to verify foreign passports, and in some cases, the process can take as long as two weeks. This delay has caused considerable inconvenience for foreigners using the high-speed rail system. Yao suggested that the ticket purchasing process should be streamlined to better accommodate foreign travelers on business trips to China.
In response, the China State Railway Group explained that the review process follows the National Immigration Administration’s real-name verification policy for foreign passengers using domestic transport. The 12306 platform needs to accurately collect key information from passengers holding foreign passports, such as name, nationality, document type, document number, and date of birth. This requirement adds an additional verification step. The complexity of foreign passport names often leads to data entry errors, resulting in a low success rate for the system’s automatic verification. As a result, much of the verification process must be done manually, which generally takes three to five working days.
The railway authorities acknowledged the issue and are working on improving the system to make the passport information submission process smoother and enhance the online verification technology. They are planning to introduce intelligent recognition tools to simplify the registration and verification of foreign passports on the 12306 platform, aiming to shorten the verification time. Additionally, they are collaborating with the National Immigration Administration to boost the success rate of asynchronous online verification for foreign passports, with efforts to speed up technological advancements already underway.
