Visa china

What Visa to Get If you find employment in China, you will get a work visa—called Z Visa—and this will be arranged by your employer; if you study, you get a study visa for the duration of your course. So far, so obvious, but there is one type of visa, an F Visa or Business Visa, that merits discussion. Officially, this visa is issued for people who are in China on short-term business trips: to buy or sell, to do some kind of short assignment work in Chinese companies, and to explore possibilities of doing business or developing business partnerships in China. Yet the ease with which this visa has been issued and the laxness of the paperwork has made it the visa of choice for an assortment of foreigners staying in China. There are freelance writers, employees in charities or organizations, English teachers, consultants in a variety of industries, travel bums, as well as freelancers who work in a variety of industries who have spent many years in China on a business visa. These people do not even have to apply for visa renewals themselves: specialized visa-procurement agencies handle all the paperwork, and get you an F-visa issued in a multiple entry format, normally one year at a time (you can do an internet search for companies who arrange the issuance of business visas). Yet there is a catch. Since most people would not be strictly adhering to the conditions of the visa, their visa is only as good as the Chinese government decides to close one eye. And the Chinese government decided, before the Olympics, to suddenly start stringently enforcing the requirements for the F Visa and also to tighten the policies or criteria in the issuance of all visas. This was a legal trawl that caught up many people who were not adhering to the conditions of the visa, and getting renewals became such an expensive hassle that many people left China. Even people who were doing legitimate business suddenly found themselves in a gray area. These new conditions and policies were presented as temporary measures, but an analysis of the situation indicated that the policies will not go back to how they were before; it appears that policies will be changed into something else still undefined, and the government does not appear to be in a hurry to do this.