If your China visa application is sitting on a status you don't recognise, this page decodes it. COVA — the China Online Visa Application portal at consular.mfa.gov.cn/VISA — has seventeen possible statuses and explains almost none of them. It shows you a label, no estimate, and no notification when it changes.
The short version: "Preliminary review in progress" is the normal one, it is where most applications sit, and it currently clears in about three days. Nothing is wrong.
This means a consular officer has your application in the queue and hasn't looked at it yet. There is no queue position, no estimate, and no email when it moves. That silence is what makes people anxious, not the wait itself.
We file China visa applications every working day and measure how long this stage actually takes. Right now it runs at a median of about three days, with a slow tail — see our measured China visa processing times, updated monthly, for the current figure and the by-consulate breakdown.
What to do while it sits there: nothing. There is no way to expedite this stage, no one to call, and refreshing does not help. Critically, do not start a second application — one passport can only have one open application, and a duplicate locks the first one. That is the single most expensive mistake at this stage, and it has its own guide: what to do when COVA says an application is already pending.
The seventeen statuses fall into four phases. Most applicants pass through four or five of them and never see the rest.
Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
In draft | Started but not submitted. COVA saves drafts for a limited window. | Finish and submit it. A draft is not an application. |
Payment pending / Payment in progress | The application fee has not settled yet. | Wait a few minutes, then re-check before paying again. |
Payment failed / Payment timed out | The card was declined or the session expired. | Pay again from the application. This does not affect the application itself. |
Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Preliminary review in progress | In the queue for a consular officer. The normal state. | Nothing. About three days at present. |
Supplementary materials to be provided | They want another document before they will continue. | Act now. The clock stops until you upload it. |
Rejected and to be modified | Something on the form needs correcting. Not a refusal. | Act now. Fix and resubmit — this is recoverable. |
Review failed | The application was not accepted for review. | Read the reason carefully before re-filing anything. |
Final review in progress | Second-stage review after your passport is in. | Nothing. |
Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Video interview to be scheduled | They want to speak with you before deciding. | Book the slot promptly — they are limited. |
Video interview to be held | Interview booked, not yet done. | Attend at the scheduled time. |
To make an appointment for a visit to the Embassy/Consulate | You must book an in-person slot. | Book it. Some posts release slots in batches. |
Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Passport to be submitted | Cleared review. They are ready for the physical passport. | This is your green light — see below. |
Passport submitted | The consulate has your passport. | Nothing. Decision pending. |
Passport to be collected | Decided, and ready for pickup. | Collect in person, or have your courier collect. |
Finished | The case is closed and the passport has left the consulate. | Nothing. |
Canceled | The application was withdrawn or cancelled. | A fresh application is needed. |
This is the one people miss, and missing it costs days. Everything up to here is online. When the status flips to Passport to be submitted, the online part is finished and the consulate is waiting for the physical passport — in person. They do not accept it by mail from individuals, and the application does not progress until the passport is physically there.
Nothing prompts you. There is no email. If you are not watching the portal, an application can sit cleared-and-waiting for a week because nobody noticed the label changed. Whichever consulate serves your state is where it has to go.
Seventeen statuses sounds alarming. In practice it isn't, and this is the part no one else can tell you — it takes filing applications daily across multiple consulates to know which labels are real and which are theoretical.
Across the applications we currently track, only six of the seventeen ever appear. The overwhelming majority sit in just two — passport to be submitted and finished — with preliminary review in progress accounting for most of the rest.
The ones that sound frightening are the ones you are least likely to meet. We have never seen a video interview status on a U.S. tourist or business application. Review failed, the payment failures and canceled effectively do not occur. And rejected and to be modified — the one that genuinely alarms people — turns up on fewer than one in ten applications, and it means "fix a field and resubmit", not "refused".
Everything else is a waiting state. These three stop the clock until you do something, and nothing chases you:
Supplementary materials to be provided — a document is missing. Your application is parked, not queued, until it is uploaded.
Rejected and to be modified — a field needs correcting. Recoverable, but only when you resubmit.
Passport to be submitted — you have cleared review and they are waiting on the physical passport.
If you are not checking the portal regularly, these are where applications quietly lose a week.
This is the question people type into a search engine at midnight, so here is the plain answer. If your status is "Rejected and to be modified," you do not start over — the reviewer is asking you to correct the flagged items on the same application and resubmit it. Your answers are kept; you edit, fix what was flagged, and send it back into the queue.
Starting a brand-new application instead is the one move that makes things worse. COVA allows one active application per applicant, so a second one is refused with the message that you already have an application pending — the lockout that strands people for weeks. If you have already done that, or your status is the rare "Review failed," don’t guess: here is how the lockout actually gets resolved, and a call to (708) 360-7277 before you submit anything else will save you the second mistake.
COVA was rebuilt on September 30, 2025. The statuses above are a product of that change — the old system had no meaningful tracking at all. Under the old portal you completed a form, printed it, turned up at the consulate with your passport, and only then found out whether anything was missing.
The new portal adds an account, full online submission with document uploads, and — the important part — a review that happens before you travel to the consulate. That is why the status matters now: it is the difference between a wasted trip and a scheduled one.
One document is easy to miss. The update introduced a Visa Application Statement, which folds in the old "Where You Stay" form and adds your jurisdiction, prior China visa history, and your reasons and ties to the U.S. It is not obvious where to find it in the portal, so here is a direct copy: China Visa Application Statement form.
What has not changed: China has not moved to an e-visa. Your physical passport still goes to a consulate. For the form itself, section by section, see our step-by-step COVA guide.
We complete the COVA application, monitor the status daily, act on it the moment it moves, submit the passport in person at the consulate that serves your state, and ship it back to you tracked. See our China visa service, or compare what to look for in a China visa service first.
How long China visa processing actually takes — measured monthly
Locked out of COVA, or told an application is already pending
China Digital Arrival Card: the form every traveler must file
Get My Passports is a private company that provides China visa application assistance. We're not affiliated with or endorsed by any government agency, and all visa decisions — type, validity, entries, and approval — are made solely by the Chinese consulate. Requirements can vary by consulate and change over time; confirm the current rules before you apply.
What does "preliminary review in progress" mean on COVA?
My COVA status says "rejected and to be modified" — is my visa refused?
What do I do when COVA says "passport to be submitted"?
Is the COVA system an e-visa?
Should I use a visa agent like Get My Passports?
Do travelers still need to worry about jurisdictions?
