Of the 47 AFC member associations, a total of 22 teams entered the competition, with Japan, North Korea, South Korea and the host nation China PR automatically qualified for the final tournament by their position as the top four teams of the 2015 AFC U-19 Women's Championship and thus did not participate in the qualifying competition.

The draw for the qualifiers was held on 19 May 2016, 16:00 MYT (UTC+8), at the AFC House in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

The teams were seeded according to their performance in the previous season in 2015 AFC U-19 Women's Championship final tournament and qualification.

The following restrictions were also applied:[3] Players born between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 2001 were eligible to compete in the 2017 AFC U-19 Women's Championship.

[5] Group C was postponed to 20–24 December 2016 due to the death of King Bhumibol Adulyadej.