Embassies in China: Emergency Numbers, Consular Districts and What They Can Do

If you need your embassy in China, you need it for one of a short list of reasons: a lost or stolen passport, an arrest or detention, a hospital stay, a death in the family, or a large-scale emergency. The table below gives, for nine countries, the Beijing embassy switchboard, the emergency or consular line (24-hour where the embassy runs one), the address and the website, all taken from the embassies' own sites. Below it: what an embassy will and won't do for you, which consulate covers the province you're in, and how to find a country that isn't listed. One thing first, because it saves the most time: if someone is in danger right now, call 110 or 120 before you call anyone's embassy.

Embassy contacts in Beijing

How to use the table. During office hours, the switchboard gets you to the consular section, which handles passports and citizens in trouble. Outside office hours, the "emergency line" column is what matters, and countries handle it differently:

• Canada: the consular emergency line on the embassy number is staffed around the clock.
• United States: the American Citizen Services number in office hours, the main switchboard after hours.
• Australia: after hours, follow the switchboard prompts, or call the 24-hour consular emergency centre in Canberra directly.
• Germany: a separate after-hours number for emergencies only — no visa questions.
• France: an evening-and-weekend mobile number reserved for serious cases — major accidents, deaths, arrests — involving French citizens.
• Spain: 24-hour consular mobiles in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong, for Spaniards in a serious emergency only, not for questions or visas.
• United Kingdom: the embassy asks you to use its online contact form; the number on the UK's China travel advice page is the one to call for help in China.
• Japan: the consular section keeps daytime hours and lists a Japanese-citizen assistance line; the embassy's own emergency page says what to do when it's closed.
• Korea: the consular section has its own number inside the embassy, with no separate after-hours line published.

Numbers and hours change, so if a call doesn't connect, the embassy website's contact page is the current version.

What your embassy can do — and what it can't

Most foreign ministries publish their own list, and they read alike because consular help is the same job everywhere. What they can do: issue you a new passport or an emergency travel document; visit you if you're detained and make sure you're being treated according to Chinese law; contact your family or friends at home on your behalf; give you lists of local English-speaking lawyers, doctors and hospitals, and of translators; and in a large-scale crisis, tell citizens what to do and where to go. Some countries also offer a small repayable emergency loan when there is truly no other way to get money to you — that varies by country, so ask.

What they can't do, and it's better to know now than in the moment: they can't get you out of jail or intervene in a Chinese court case, only check that you're being treated according to the law and raise it if you're not; they can't pay your hospital bill, your hotel or your flight; they can't act as your lawyer, your travel agent or your interpreter; and they can't make a Chinese official ignore a Chinese law. That last one matters for the everyday problems visitors bring them — a fine, a visa overstay, a dispute with a landlord — where the embassy's honest answer is that you have to resolve it under local rules.

Call 110 first, the embassy second

The order is simple. Anything involving danger to a person, a crime in progress or an accident goes to the Chinese emergency numbers — 110 for police, 120 for an ambulance — because they are the ones who can send help; the government's own rule is that 110 handles crime, threats to life or property and urgent calls for help, while 12345 takes non-urgent complaints. Once the immediate situation is under control, call your embassy if it's a passport, a detention, a serious injury or a death. A stolen wallet is a police matter, not an embassy one: call 110 or go to the nearest police station and ask for the written case acceptance receipt, which the police must issue and which your insurer will want. A hotel argument or a tour that went wrong isn't for the embassy either; those go to the 12345 hotline, which in Beijing runs in ten foreign languages including English. Our guide to emergency numbers in China lays out who handles what. And don't dial 12308 expecting help: it's the Chinese Foreign Ministry's hotline for Chinese citizens abroad.

Not in Beijing? Find your consulate

Embassies sit in Beijing, but most countries also keep consulates-general in other cities, and each consulate is responsible for a fixed set of provinces called a consular district. If you're in Shanghai, Guangzhou or Chengdu and your country has a consulate there, it is usually closer and faster than the embassy, and for a lost passport you'll normally be told to go there. A few examples from the embassies' own pages:

• United States: Beijing covers Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Shandong, Gansu, Hebei, Henan, Jiangxi, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shanxi, Tibet and Xinjiang; Shanghai covers Shanghai, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang; Guangzhou covers Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Guizhou, Hainan and Yunnan; Shenyang covers the northeast and Inner Mongolia; Wuhan covers Hubei, Hunan, Henan and Jiangxi — the embassy's page lists Henan and Jiangxi under both Beijing and Wuhan, so either post will take the call.
• United Kingdom: Chongqing covers Chongqing, Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou; Guangzhou covers Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Hainan, Hunan and Jiangxi; Wuhan covers Hubei and Henan; the Shanghai consulate's page doesn't spell out its provinces, so call and ask.
• Canada: the Beijing embassy itself serves the north and west — Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Ningxia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and the three northeastern provinces — with consulates elsewhere.
• Germany: Beijing covers 16 provinces and regions including Tianjin, Hebei, Henan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi and the far west; Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenyang, Guangzhou and Hong Kong cover the rest.
• Korea: ten posts — Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, Shenyang, Xi'an, Wuhan, Hong Kong and a Dalian office — each with its own district; Shanghai's, for example, covers Shanghai, Anhui, Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

The pattern is what to remember: Shanghai consulates usually cover Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Anhui; Guangzhou covers the south; Chengdu or Chongqing covers the southwest; Shenyang covers the northeast; Wuhan covers central China. Your embassy's website lists its consulates with the exact provinces, and it's worth checking for your own country before you travel outside Beijing and Shanghai.

If your country isn't in the table

Two official directories list the embassies in Beijing. The Beijing municipal government's English site keeps an alphabetical listing of foreign embassies with each embassy's address and telephone number, last updated in 2020, so treat its number as a starting point and confirm it on the embassy's own site; start at its Foreign Embassies in Beijing index. The Chinese Foreign Ministry also publishes a directory of foreign missions in China. Between the two you'll get a switchboard number; from there, your own foreign ministry's website will have the consular section's direct line and after-hours arrangements, which the Chinese directories don't carry. Search "[your country] embassy Beijing consular emergency" and stay on your own government's official site — the address usually ends in a government domain such as .gov, .gov.uk or .gc.ca.

Before you dial any embassy, have these ready: your full name as it appears in your passport, your passport number if you know it (a photo of the ID page is enough), your date of birth, where you are right now, a phone number they can call back, and in one sentence what has happened and what you need. If you're calling about someone else, have their details instead. Consular officers deal with a lot of calls; the ones with the facts lined up get helped fastest.

Before you go: register, and save the numbers

Most foreign ministries run a free traveller registration service — the US has the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program (STEP), Australia has Smartraveller, Canada has Registration of Canadians Abroad, and the UK sends travel-advice alerts by email. Registering takes five minutes and means that in an earthquake, a flood or a political emergency your embassy knows you're in the country and can reach you. Then put the embassy switchboard, the after-hours line and the local consulate into your phone under names you'll find in a hurry, alongside 110 and 120. Our safety tips for travellers in China has the rest of the pre-departure list, and if the reason you're reading this is a missing passport, go straight to our step-by-step guide to a lost passport in China. For a hospital stay, the embassy can suggest names, but the practical list is in English-speaking hospitals in China.

Last updated: September 2026