Let's kill a rumor going around a lot of African WeChat groups right now: there is no city in China where you can just walk into the Vehicle Management Office and skip the written test because you're African. The mutual-recognition deals China currently has only cover a handful of countries — France, Serbia, Belgium, and the UAE — plus Hong Kong licenses, which convert without any test at all. No African country is on that list yet. So if you're in Lagos, Accra, Nairobi, Joburg, Addis, wherever, and you're converting your home license in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Beijing or anywhere else, you are sitting the theory test. Budget for it.

Here's the part that actually is in your favor: everyone who converts a valid, non-expired foreign license already skips the practical road test. That's standard, not a special favor. You just need to pass the 100-question written exam, and you need 90 out of 100 to pass — no partial credit, no rounding up. It covers signs, traffic law, penalties and emergency procedures, and you usually get two attempts a day if you fail. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Hangzhou run it in English, and some offer French, Spanish, Arabic, German, Russian, Japanese or Korean too. If you're in a smaller city and they only offer it in Chinese, you're legally allowed to just travel to a bigger city and test there instead of wrestling with a translator in the exam room.

On the IDP question — stop carrying it around expecting it to work. China never signed the 1949 Geneva Convention or the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic, which are the treaties that make an International Driving Permit mean anything. So in mainland China an IDP isn't a license at all, it's just a multilingual translation of your home license with zero legal standing on its own. Police will not accept it, and neither will a rental company. What actually gets you on the road legally is either a temporary provisional permit (临时机动车驾驶许可), good for up to 90 days and extendable to a year, or the full C1 conversion if you're on a residence permit.

Now the detail people always forget until they're standing at the counter getting turned away: your original license has to come with a certified Chinese translation, done by a translation or notary agency the VMO actually recognizes — not a random Taobao shop, not Google Translate printed out, and not the IDP's own translation pages. Ask your embassy or the VMO for their approved agency list before you go. It typically runs 250-300 RMB and takes a few days, so build that into your timeline along with the medical check, passport photos, and your police residence registration form. Show up with all of it done properly and the whole conversion, minus studying for the written test, can genuinely wrap up in two or three visits.