Chinese orthography consists of visually complex characters, which leads to the belief that visual processing is important. This study examined the extent to which general visual and visual-orthographic skills predicted children's. Chinese character reading in China and Canada. Participants were 122 children in China and 93 children in Canada from kindergarten to Grade 2. General visual skills were measured with three subtests of the Test of Visual-Perceptual Skills (TVPS)-Revised (Gardner, 1996). Visual-orthographic skills were measured by three visual-orthographic (VO) experimental tasks. Children were also tested on character reading, rapid digit naming, phonological awareness and phonological strategy use. The study showed children in China outperformed their Canadian counterparts in visual-orthographic processing, but not in general visual processing. Compared with general visual skills, visual-orthographic skills were a better predictor of Chinese character reading. Further, the importance of visual skills in predicting character reading decreased from kindergarten to Grade 2.