No. Bringing a drone into China from abroad does not work — as a visitor, customs will not let it through. Flying one is a separate problem again: the rules have been tightening, Beijing and the area around it have banned even storing a drone, and a drone bought inside China has to be registered to a Chinese ID before it is allowed to take off. For a visitor, the practical answer is no.
Bringing one in
A drone arriving with a foreign visitor does not clear customs. This is not a form you fill in at the airport; there is no version of the trip where you land with a drone and fly it here. Leave it at home, and do not plan a shoot around it.
Flying one, even if you got one here
Set entry aside for a moment and the picture does not improve. Drone policy in China has been tightening, not loosening. Beijing and the surrounding region have restricted drones to the point of prohibiting their storage, never mind their flight. A drone bought inside China has to be bound to a Chinese ID before it can be flown at all. There is no gap in that for a visitor's aerial footage.
What to bring instead
Everything else. The photographs on this site were taken from the ground — from passes, from the side of the road, from the courtyard of a monastery at dawn — with cameras that fit in a coat pocket. I shoot with a DJI Pocket 4.
The plateau does not need height to be photographed. It needs you to be standing in the right place when the light lands, which is a different kind of preparation and a more useful one.
Questions I get on this one
Can I bring one in my checked luggage?
What about a small one — a Mini or a Neo?
Is there any way around this?
So how do you get those high, wide shots?
From travelling in and out of China with camera gear, and from the current rules as they apply to visitors. Drone policy here is changing — if this point decides your packing, check the current position before you fly. Related: safety · all essentials