Make Chinese Passport Photo

China's Exit-Entry Administration sets the passport photo at 33mm wide by 48mm tall. Nearly every other country in this part of the world uses 35x45mm, so the Chinese frame is 2mm narrower and 3mm taller — enough that a photo cut for one is visibly wrong for the other.

You cannot fix this by trimming a 35x45mm print. Trimming the width to 33mm does nothing about the missing 3mm of height, and stretching the image distorts the facial proportions the biometric check measures. Re-crop from the original instead.

Chinese passport photos accept a white or light blue background. Chinese visa photos are stricter — white or off-white only.

That asymmetry catches people who assume one Chinese photo rule covers both. If you are preparing a visa photo rather than a passport photo, use white and do not reach for the blue backdrop.

The head must measure 28-33mm from chin to crown and 15-22mm across. There should be 3-5mm of space between the top of your hair and the top edge of the photo.

Both the head range and the margin are published as ranges rather than single values, which gives you some tolerance — but the crop still has to land inside them, and 48mm of height means the framing feels looser than a 35x45mm photo.

The requirement is a strictly neutral expression: no smiling, no visible teeth, mouth closed, both eyes open, looking straight at the camera with your head level.

The rules are based on ICAO Document 9303 biometric photo standards, so the usual conventions apply — no hats or head coverings except for religious reasons, no tinted glasses, no other people or objects in frame, and the photo must be recent within six months.