Steve,
My wife and I have been to China a few times.
These have been my experiences.
We flew Sydney - Beijing - Guiyang with Air China in 2011. We arrived in Beijing at 6.30am, went through passport control, then picked up our luggage and went to the domestic transfer desk to check in. We then had to go through security and this was a joke. There were "hundreds" all trying to do what we were attempting to do and there was only 1 person stamping the boarding passes. This was done after checking our image with our passport photo. You had to stand in front of a camera. We had to go through a total of 3 security check points before we were able to head for our departure gate. We arrived 10 minutes before push back which was at 7.50am.
The other time was from Hefei - Shanghai - Sydney flying with China Eastern. At the check in at Hefei, our luggage was checked through to Sydney. When we arrived at Shanghai we did go to the luggage carousel for our flight from Hefei to see if our luggage was there, but it was not. We had a 10 hour stop over as there was only 1 China Eastern flight out of Hefei.
Our other trips to China were direct flights ie. Sydney - Guangzhou etc.
Hope this is some help.
Brian.
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