No, in either bag. China's civil aviation authority prohibits passengers from carrying lighters and matches in hand luggage and in checked baggage, on flights within the country. The ban dates from 7 April 2008 and it has no close equivalent in most of the world, where a single lighter on your person is usually permitted.
Why the hold is not the answer#
Most prohibited-item rules a traveller meets are really hand luggage rules: the item is fine, it just has to travel in the hold. Knives, large liquids and tools all work this way.
Fire sources are the exception, and in China they are an outright exception. A lighter in your suitcase is not compliant packing; it is the same breach as a lighter in your pocket. The prohibition extends beyond the obvious objects to the wider category of ignition sources — matches, cigarette lighters, flint and magnesium fire-starters, and self-heating meals of the kind sold at Chinese railway stations.
That last one is worth pausing on, because self-heating hotpot is a genuinely popular Chinese train snack and the heating sachet inside it is what makes it a problem in the air.
This is not the railway rule#
Here is the distinction that matters, and it is why travellers get it wrong.
At a Chinese railway station, a lighter found at the entrance screening is taken off you and you carry on to your platform. It is an inconvenience. Station security in China is built for throughput and is largely uninterested in you, and confiscation is the normal outcome.
At an airport it is not that. Carrying or checking a fire source on a civil flight is handled by the aviation police as an offence rather than as a screening find, under China's Public Security Administration Punishments Law, its Fire Protection Law and the Regulations on Civil Aviation Security. The realistic outcomes include a fine and administrative detention — and, at minimum, missing your flight while it is dealt with.
The practical consequence is simple: a habit that costs you a lighter at Beijing South can cost you the afternoon at an airport.
What to actually do#
- Empty your pockets before you leave for the airport, not at the checkpoint. The usual failure is not defiance, it is a lighter that lives in a jacket.
- Check the suitcase too, particularly if you have been travelling by rail and buying things at stations.
- Buy them on arrival. Lighters are sold everywhere in China for a couple of yuan. There is nothing to be gained by transporting one.
- Do not hide it. Concealment turns a mistake into something the police read as deliberate.
- Power banks are the second item to check before a Chinese domestic flight, for an unrelated reason — they need a Chinese certification mark that foreign-bought units often lack.
- Liquids are the third, and the least expected. On a domestic leg they are barred from the cabin altogether apart from a short toiletries list — a tighter rule than the international one, which is the opposite of what travellers assume.
Does this apply to international flights?#
The prohibition is written for civil aviation in China, so it governs your domestic legs and your departure from a Chinese airport. Rules at the other end are set by the other country, and China has separately relaxed the ordinary-lighter restriction for flights to the United States. Treat any such exception as narrow and route-specific rather than as a general permission, and check the carrier if it matters to you.
For everything else about flying internally — when it beats the train, what a delay entitles you to — see the transport guide.