Cancelling hotel bookings after getting a Chinese visa

Question

I am an EU citizen. I want to visit China with my Chinese girlfriend and stay a few days in a hotel and a few days at her place. In order to avoid getting a letter of invitation for a visa, I need to make a tourist visa and for that I need proof that I have booked a hotel.

A blog said you can just book something on ebookers and cancel that later. I have some questions about that:

• Is this still ok? Because the blog post is 2 years old and back then it was officially allowed to change your accommodation plans during the visit.
• Will they check the hotel booking only when making the visa or also when I enter the country? Because I prefer not to spend 100€ for a hotel in Bejing for the first day of visit, until I get access to Internet.
• Will the visa be limited to Bejing, eg will the accommodation be written in the document? I actually need to go to other parts of China, not just Bejing, although this will be the arrival and departure airport.

Answer 1

Booking a hotel and cancelling after the visa is issued is pretty standard. That's, among other things, what the travel agencies in Hong Kong do when you apply for a Chinese visa.

Your visa will be valid for all of China (except a few areas, like Tibet). The hotel bookings given during the visa application won't limit your visa. You're free to roam around. The bookings aren't, as far as my (extensive) experience is concerned, checked beyond their being documented in the application. And they are never checked against your registration with the police while in China (done by the hotel for you).