The China Child Vaccine Schedule for Expat Parents: Free Class I and Paid Class II Shots, Decoded

The first time I sat in a Chinese community vaccination clinic with a friend's green booklet (绿本) in my hand, I counted more than thirty rows of stamps, abbreviations, and dates written in two date formats. The nurse spoke fast, the booklet was in Chinese, and nobody had time to explain why some shots cost nothing and others cost ¥800 each. If you are a foreign parent raising a child in China, that scene is probably familiar. This guide breaks the system down the way I wish someone had broken it down for me.

Two tiers: free Class I and paid Class II

Here is the one fact that explains almost everything about how vaccination works in China. The childhood vaccine list is split into two tiers, and they behave completely differently.

Class I vaccines (一类) are free and mandatory. They are paid for by the National Immunization Program and given at no cost at your assigned community clinic. They follow a fixed age schedule that starts at birth, and they are not optional. When your child enrols in kindergarten or primary school, the staff check the green booklet, and any missing Class I dose gets flagged for catch-up.

Class II vaccines (二类) are optional and self-paid. You pay out of pocket (or through supplemental insurance) for these. They protect against diseases that are common but sit outside the national program: rotavirus, pneumococcal disease, hand-foot-mouth, chickenpox, influenza, HPV. "Optional" is misleading, though. Most paediatricians strongly recommend at least the rotavirus, PCV13, EV71, varicella, and flu set in the first three years.

The Toolora China child vaccine schedule maps both tiers onto your child's birth date in a single calendar, so you stop trying to hold the distinction in your head. It follows the 2021 revision of the National Immunization Program Child Immunization Schedule issued by the National Health Commission and the Chinese CDC.

What the free schedule actually covers

The Class I block covers 11 vaccines that protect against 12 diseases. From the manifest, those are:

Hepatitis B
BCG (tuberculosis)
Polio — bivalent oral (bOPV) and inactivated (IPV)
DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis)
MMR (measles, mumps, rubella)
Group A meningococcal
Group A+C meningococcal
Live Japanese encephalitis
Live Hepatitis A
DT diphtheria-tetanus booster

These are the doses the school will check. The first three — Hepatitis B, BCG, and the polio series — start in the first weeks of life, which is exactly when new parents have the least bandwidth to read a thirty-row booklet.

The paid shots you will actually be offered

The tool also lists the 12 second-tier vaccines a Chinese clinic genuinely puts in front of parents, rather than a generic textbook list: 13-valent pneumococcal (PCV13), the hexavalent and pentavalent combos, rotavirus, EV71 (hand-foot-mouth), varicella, HPV for eligible girls, influenza, post-exposure rabies, MMRV, standalone Hib, the Hib-DTaP combo, and the A+C+Y+W135 conjugate meningococcal vaccine.

For each one, the tool shows the dose count, the interval rule, the age window, typical side effects, and contraindications. One feature I genuinely appreciate is the smart-merge logic: one dose of the pentavalent combo (DTaP-IPV-Hib) replaces a separate DTaP, IPV, and Hib visit, so the calendar does not tell you to double-jab. Tick "I plan to use pentavalent" and the schedule consolidates the overlapping rows automatically.

A worked example: a baby born 2026-05-26

Say your child was born on 2026-05-26. You enter that single date and the tool prints a personalized calendar that runs all the way to 2032-05 (age six). The immediate next-due doses look like this:

Hepatitis B #2 — due 2026-06-26
BCG — usually given at hospital discharge, so you tick it as already done
Polio #1 — due 2026-07-26

Every dose is dated to the exact month it is due, sorted chronologically, with status flags for already-given, due-this-month, and overdue. You save the calendar to your phone, and you stop guessing which shot is next for the following six years. If you want to double-check how old your child is in months at any given clinic visit — China schedules everything by month of age, not by week — the age calculator gives you the exact figure to read against the booklet.

Starting late, or moving cities

You do not have to start at birth. If your child is already four or nine months old, the tool's catch-up logic flags every dose with its age window. Inside the window, you can still receive a dose; past the upper bound, the calendar shifts to the alternative regimen. BCG, for example, is normally given at birth but can be given up to three months; rotavirus must complete before 32 weeks.

This matters a lot for families relocating within China. Smaller cities did not always stock Hib consistently, so a baby moving to a tier-one city might have gaps. You tick off the doses already stamped in the booklet, and the tool flags what is missing, proposes the catch-up timing, and shows which dates can be combined with already-scheduled visits to cut clinic trips.

What the tool does — and does not — do

A few honest limits, because over-promising helps no one. This is a calendar generator, not a reminder service. It produces a static, personalized schedule you can save, print, or screenshot. For phone alerts, export the dates into iOS Calendar, Google Calendar, or WeChat schedule yourself, one event per dose with a 7-day-prior nudge.

On privacy: your baby's birth date is computed locally in JavaScript and never sent to a server. The birth date lives in the URL so a shared link round-trips, but already-given dose status is stored only in your browser's localStorage and never leaves the device. You can fill in the real birthday. If you share the link, the recipient sees the birthday but not which doses you have ticked.

And the most important caveat, which the tool itself prints in a top notice bar: the final say is your designated vaccination clinic (接种门诊). Local CDCs adjust scheduling for outbreaks or supply, and the on-site doctor assesses things like a mild fever on the day. The rule of thumb is push, do not skip — a one-to-two-week delay rarely forces you to redo earlier doses, because almost every dose has several weeks of built-in flex.

My honest take

What sold me on planning ahead rather than reacting clinic-by-clinic is the cost picture. The paid tier is not a luxury upsell. Rotavirus, PCV13, EV71, varicella, and flu all protect against illnesses that are genuinely common in Chinese daycare, and the bill skipped to save money tends to come back as a hospital visit. Seeing PCV13 at roughly ¥3,200 across four doses and rotavirus at roughly ¥900 across three, laid out next to a real calendar, let my friend's family budget the cash flow over three years instead of being surprised at the counter every two months. Triage by what your family can afford, not by the free-versus-paid line.

Pull up the schedule, enter one birth date, and walk into your next clinic appointment with a plan rather than a stack of stamps you cannot read.

Made by Toolora · Updated 2026-06-13