Home -> Law Blog Directory -> International Law Blogs -> China Law Blog

International Law

: China Law Blog

China Visas. I'm Getting Deja Vu Olympic Feelings, Part II, The Now I Know I Am Right Edition.

By Dan Harris and Steve Dickinson

Three days ago, I did a post entitled, "China Visas. I'm Getting Deja Vu Olympic Feelings," in which I talked about having heard from clients of difficulties in getting their China visas:

One of the great things a about being a lawyer is that we hear all kinds of things from our clients and potential clients. And then when we start hearing those same things on the blogs, we know something is up. I am hearing a lot of things about the difficulty of getting anything but a three month visa. I actually got a call from a potential (very broadly defined) client the other day wanting our help in getting hima one year visa. He "owns" a business in China and it is "absolutely critical to the point of it being do or die" that he be in China at the end of May. He had applied for a business visa (an F Visa) and been turned down cold and essentially told not to bother coming back until 2010 to try again. We talked a bit about what he was doing in China and it turned out he had set up an internet business with a Chinese "partner" where, on the books, his Chinese partner owns the business entirely, but this American has an oral agreement with the "100% trusted"Chinese partner that the business is really owned 50-50.

Yesterday, the mainstream media and the Chinese government essentially confirmed the crackdown. A Vancouver Sun article, entitled, "China to begin security crackdown," writes on how the goal of providing a "harmonious environment" leading up to China's 60th anniversary celebration is causing the brakes to go on the issuance of visas. Like me, the writer of this article sees this visa tightening as similar to what happened with the Olympics:

It is a move reminiscent of the ramped-up security ahead of last summer's Beijing Olympic Games in which hundreds of "dissidents" were detained and such tight visa restrictions enforced that hotels in Beijing, which expected to reap windfall profits from increased tourism, found they had rooms going begging.

It bears repeating my "bottom line" from my previous post on this: Bottom Line. There are three very important things that should be taken away from all this. One, if you need certainty in terms of being able to get into China, you cannot rely on either an F visa (business) or an L visa (tourist) for that. Two, if you need certainty in terms of being able to get into China, the solution is usually to legitimately set up your own company so you can get a Z visa (employee). Three, and probably most important, is that the Chinese government will nearly always place politics and stability over economics.

Full post as published by China Law Blog on April 29, 2009 (boomark / email).