The topic "jobs in China" made me think in the other option: self-employed in China.

In the past I have been a language teacher. Part of it was as an employee, while later I was working on my own. And I must say that this was much more rewarding. It's not just that you make more money; it's also because people hold you in higher esteem and you are free to use your time as you like. So maybe this person who is looking for a job should think in the option of working on his own.

Question is, would that be legally possible in China? If yes, what would he have to do? What kind of visa would he need? Or what if he wants to be a trader in China? If for example his brother (or any other family member) did the buying in his home country, he would do the selling in China. - And of course there are many more options.

Please discuss!

The foreigners can work in China free for sure, as i am Chinese and work in Yiwu city. Here all over the city you can see lots of foreigners and their companies or agants here. As here there is the biggest small commodity center in the worlds.  Also in other city of China, now more and more foreigners come to China live and work here.

Welcome to China !!

Quoting from [Shirley Peng]:

The foreigners can work in China free for sure, as i am Chinese and work in Yiwu city. Here all over the city you can see lots of foreigners and their companies or agants here. As here there is the biggest small commodity center in the worlds.  Also in other city of China, now more and more foreigners come to China live and work here.

Welcome to China !!

Hi Shirley, do you know what their immigrational status is? Egernia said recently (quote): "No it is not really possible for a foreigner to be self-employed in China unless he/she invests in starting a representative office or establishing some other legal business identity i.e. investing money into China."

Could it be that these foreigners you mention fulfill this requirement?

Neoblast if you are a Chinese citizen then you can do as you please as China is your home.

If you are a foreign citizen residing in China then you are a guest here and the local authorities would have two main interests:

a. ensuring that you are in the country with legal status i.e. on the correct visa;

b. paying income taxes for any income that you earn while in China

Assuming that you are in China legally and present within the validity of your visa then yes you could keep doing your ebay business when based in China and the authorities would not be concerned about the income that you are earning assuming that it is continued to being paid into what ever overseas account you are currently using.

As to the situation in Yiwu well there are any number of reasons that foreigners would be present there but as Germex indicates you would have to look at each individual to understand their situation. Some possibilities are:

a. tourist on tourist visas;

b. business people on business visas;

c. resident foreigners on resident visas granted for work that they are doing in China with a registered local company or foreign representative office located in China;

d. foreigners illegally working on visitors or business visas

The main point is that assuming a foreigner wants to come and live in China and be self employed the only real avenue that I am aware of is to do it by the book and set up a legitimate company or representative office. In the case of the latter your office cannot earn income here in China and must show that financial support is coming in from overseas.

I suppose the only other possibility to be legally self employed is for those foreigners married to local Chinese. Unlike some countries there is no instant right to residency through marriage but after 5 years of marriage certain benefits are afforded to foreign spouses.

Egernia, in some countries it's possible to be the sole proprietor of a business and also one of the employees (or the only one). Therefore you pay yourself a salary from the company's income.

Applying this knowledge to the Chinese situation, would it be possible to first open a business as the sole owner (in this case a school) and then employ yourself? That could perceivably take care of the immigrational problem.

Germex I think that is a possibility based upon the investment in China strategy. To my knowledge a foreigner can gain residency status here by investing a certain amount of money into the country so I suppose provided that the amount you invested in the school met that requirement then yes you could sustain your own residency based upon that investment.

I expect that you would need to prove that the investment dollars came from overseas.

But, there may be some regulation that prevents foreigners from opening educational businesses in which case you may need a Chinese partner to do the paperwork through - silent partner as such. There are a lot of 'foreign owned' private language schools in China but I think you will find most of these are registered in the name of the Chinese spouse or partner and then the foreign spouse is actually employed by the company. So perhaps similar to what you suggest in your post but the difference being that the legal entity is not the foreigner but a Chinese person.

For all intents and purposes I think it is fair to suggest that China is not one of the easiest places for the average foreigner to come and set up shop and perhaps Thailand, Japan, and even Taiwan would be easier choices here.

Quoting from [Egernia]:

Germex I think that is a possibility based upon the investment in China strategy. To my knowledge a foreigner can gain residency status here by investing a certain amount of money into the country so I suppose provided that the amount you invested in the school met that requirement then yes you could sustain your own residency based upon that investment.

I expect that you would need to prove that the investment dollars came from overseas.

But, there may be some regulation that prevents foreigners from opening educational businesses in which case you may need a Chinese partner to do the paperwork through - silent partner as such. There are a lot of 'foreign owned' private language schools in China but I think you will find most of these are registered in the name of the Chinese spouse or partner and then the foreign spouse is actually employed by the company. So perhaps similar to what you suggest in your post but the difference being that the legal entity is not the foreigner but a Chinese person.

For all intents and purposes I think it is fair to suggest that China is not one of the easiest places for the average foreigner to come and set up shop and perhaps Thailand, Japan, and even Taiwan would be easier choices here.

Thanks for the explanations, Simon! My interest in the subject is twofold. One on hand it's obviously an interesting subject for a few of us, and also I wanted to compare the situation with Mexico. As it looks, China has immigration-related laws pretty similar to Mexico - some years ago! So that could tell us a little where things in China are heading.

That means, by analogy it could also tell us a little about how the situation regarding foreign investments might develop. In these days when everything is "global", laws and precendents pretty much repeat themselves. And that is probably even more interesting for most of us.

Thanks for the infos!

Sorry for the lack of infos about me ^^ I'm not Chinese, I'm Canadian and I plan on staying in China for 4 to 6 months maximum. The reason why I would continue selling on eBay is that it is my way of financing my trip in China but I don't make much money, I'm not even powerseller yet....about 150-200$ in profit a week. No big deal here, just enough to survive  .  So if I want to still sell while in China, what kind of visa I should get? Also, how do I pay taxes on the money I make... how can they even know how much I will make while abroad?

Germex - when I first came to China back in 1995 much of the country was pretty much at the equivalent level of living as Australia was back in the 1950's. So basically they were about 40 years behind us. Now ten years later I reckon that most of China (outside of the major cities) is equivalent to Australia back in the late 80's. So in ten years time they have made 30 years of progress. Assuming that this continues then I agree that there will likely be huge changes to the way that all sorts of things are handled here.

Neoblast - this is one of the funny things about the restrictive legislation that countries such as China enact. There is no legitimate manner that I am aware of that you could pay income taxes for that income that you earn even if you wanted to, as there is no legitimate recognition of the income here.

What I mean is that the only foreigners who are allowed to earn income in China and therefore eligible to pay income tax are foreigners here on Z visas / resident permits. All other cl of foreigner are transient visitors here who have no right to earn income here and therefore no reason to be paying income tax here.

In your case I assume that your main purpose for travel to China is either travel or study. If it is travel then you will be on an L visitors visa or for study a student visa. Either way you are deemed to be short term guest and not entitled to earn income here nor pay income tax here.

So basically the Chinese government will not be concerned with what money you are earning overseas.

Nice, the reason I'm going back is just because I loved my first trip there and also because I want to study in international trade so by living in China for a while I think it could help me with my future carrer in some way...and maybe study there after, not sure yet about it... Anyway, by what you say, I'm just gonna get the L visa and deal with it. It's not like if I was opening a bar in Beijing hehe.

once again, thank you very much for the answers. It helps me so much!

Quoting from [germex]:

The topic "jobs in China" made me think in the other option: self-employed in China.

In the past I have been a language teacher. Part of it was as an employee, while later I was working on my own. And I must say that this was much more rewarding. It's not just that you make more money; it's also because people hold you in higher esteem and you are free to use your time as you like. So maybe this person who is looking for a job should think in the option of working on his own.

Question is, would that be legally possible in China? If yes, what would he have to do? What kind of visa would he need? Or what if he wants to be a trader in China? If for example his brother (or any other family member) did the buying in his home country, he would do the selling in China. - And of course there are many more options.

Please discuss!