Guides turn up all over this site. You are told to tip a private guide, warned that a guide steering you into a jade factory is on commission, and told that Tibet cannot be entered without one. What has never appeared anywhere is the basic fact that a Chinese tour guide is a licensed individual, that the licence is checkable on the spot, and that the guide personally is under a list of prohibitions separate from anything the agency signed.
That separation is the useful part. The agency has its duties. The guide has their own.
Two instruments, two actors#
The rules come from two different places and it is worth keeping them apart.
State Council Order No. 263, the Regulations on the Administration of Tour Guides, promulgated on 14 May 1999, in force since 1 October 1999 and amended by the State Council's decision of 7 October 2017. Still in force. Its Article 4 is the foundation: to work as a guide anywhere in China you must hold a guide card. Article 8 requires a guide to wear it while working.
China National Tourism Administration Order No. 44, the Measures for the Administration of Tour Guides, adopted on 16 October 2017 and in force since 1 January 2018. This is the one that modernised the card and set out how a guide must present themselves.
Note the issuer: the tourism administration of the day, not the culture and tourism ministry that succeeded it in 2018. Several summaries online attribute the order to the ministry; the text itself does not.
The card is on their phone#
Article 7 of Order No. 44 is the change most visitors have never registered.
The guide card is an electronic credential. It is issued to a format set nationally, administered by tourism authorities through the national tourism supervision service information system, and held as electronic data on the guide's own mobile phone or other mobile device.
So there is no laminated card to inspect, and its absence is not a red flag. What you are looking for is a screen and a badge.
What you are entitled to ask for#
Article 20 is short and it is the reason this page exists:
导游在执业过程中应当携带电子导游证、佩戴导游身份标识，并开启导游执业相关应用软件。旅游者有权要求导游展示电子导游证和导游身份标识。
A guide at work must carry the electronic guide card, wear the guide identity badge, and have the guide practice application software switched on. And then the second sentence: travellers have the right to require the guide to display the electronic card and the badge.
Three things follow.
The badge is not a company lanyard. It is a specified identity marker, and a guide wearing only an agency-branded tag is not wearing what the rule asks for.
The app being on is part of the obligation, not an optional extra — practice is logged rather than taken on trust.
Asking is a right, not a confrontation. You are not accusing anybody of anything; the regulation anticipates the request and puts the duty to comply on the guide. It costs one polite sentence at the start of a day.
What a guide may not do#
Article 23 of Order No. 44 lists eleven prohibited acts. Four of them are the ones a visitor actually meets:
- Hawking goods to travellers. The guide personally selling you something is out.
- Soliciting tips from travellers.
- Changing the itinerary on their own initiative.
- Deceiving travellers into taking part in shopping against their true wishes.
The older regulation says the same thing about tips in stronger language. Article 15 of Order No. 263 forbids a guide to hawk goods to travellers or buy goods from them, and forbids soliciting a tip either expressly or by implication — a formulation that covers the heavy hint as well as the direct request. Article 23 of that regulation backs it with an order to correct and a fine of ¥1,000 to ¥30,000, and in serious cases the guide card can be revoked.
Which does not make tipping wrong#
Hold both halves of this together, because they are easy to confuse and this site says the other half on four pages.
A tip you decide to give is not a tip that was solicited. The prohibition runs against the guide asking — openly, or by hinting. It says nothing about a traveller who has had a good day choosing to hand over an envelope at the end of it, which is the ordinary courtesy on private tours that the tipping page describes and which nothing here changes.
What the rule gives you is the answer to the awkward version: a guide who raises the subject is in breach, and you are entitled to treat the request as improper rather than as a custom you have failed to understand.
Where this sits next to the agency's duties#
Do not confuse the guide's obligations with the travel agency's, because the remedies are different and they attach to different parties.
The agency's side — unreasonably low pricing, designated shopping venues, paid extra programmes, and the refund you can require within thirty days of the tour ending — is set out in full on the shopping-stops page and is a matter of contract with the company you booked. The guide's side is personal licensing and conduct, enforced against the individual.
That is also why the distinction between an operator and a tout matters so much at a site entrance. A licensed agency running an unlawful shopping stop owes you a refund; a seller working the forecourt has no contract and no licence to lose. The same test applies to the person guiding you: someone with no card and no badge has nothing at stake.
In practice#
- Ask once, at the start. "May I see your guide card and badge?" is a normal request and the answer takes ten seconds.
- Look for the badge worn, not carried. The regulation says wear.
- A phone screen is the correct answer. The card has been electronic since 2018.
- Treat a request for a tip as the breach it is — and tip anyway at the end if the day deserved it, on your own initiative.
- Keep the agency and the guide separate in your head. A complaint about a shopping stop goes to the company; a complaint about the guide's conduct goes to the tourism authority.
- The pattern is familiar by now. China posts a great deal of checkable credential in plain sight — the hotel star plaque works the same way, and so does the badge on a guide's chest.
Frequently asked questions#
Do tour guides in China need a licence?#
Yes. Under the State Council's Regulations on the Administration of Tour Guides, anyone carrying out guiding activities in China must hold a guide card, and must wear it while working. Guiding without one is not permitted.
What is a Chinese electronic tour guide card?#
Since Order No. 44 took effect on 1 January 2018 the guide card has been an electronic credential held as data on the guide's own mobile device, administered nationally through the tourism supervision service information system. There is no plastic card to inspect.
Can I ask a Chinese tour guide to show their licence?#
Yes — explicitly. Travellers have the right to require a guide to display both the electronic guide card and the guide identity badge, and the guide must also have the guide practice application running while working.
Can a tour guide in China ask for a tip?#
No. A guide may not solicit a tip from travellers, either expressly or by implication, and doing so can bring an order to correct, a fine of ¥1,000 to ¥30,000, and in serious cases revocation of the guide card.
Should I still tip a tour guide in China?#
If you want to. The prohibition is on the guide asking, not on you giving. A voluntary payment at the end of a private tour remains a common courtesy; a guide who raises the subject is in breach of the rules.
What can a Chinese tour guide not do?#
Among eleven prohibited acts, the ones a visitor meets are selling goods to travellers, soliciting tips, changing the itinerary on their own initiative, and deceiving travellers into shopping against their real wishes.