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From the highly authoritative People's Daily:
The Beijing Olympics official website recently released "A guide to Chinese law for Foreigners coming to, leaving or staying in China during the Olympics" (hereinafter referred to as "the Guide"). The Guide points out that ticketholders for the Olympic Games from overseas will not automatically be granted a visa. They still need to apply for a visa from China's overseas embassies.
Fons Tuinstra of China Herald fills us in on the latest visa rumours:
- L and F visa extensions will not be offered from July 1 onwards, not even 30-day extensions:
"Under normal circumstances, most passport holders could get extensions for 30 days simply by paying a fee. Extensions and visas valid up to July 1 can be obtained, not beyond. This is what I have been told by 3 visa agents in Beijing," writes a user on the LP Thorntree "Visa Sticky" thread). Reports are generally saying that after June 30th there will be no more visa extensions. If you arrive after 1 July, you will only get 30 days with no option of extensions until some time in fall. "Interns and short-term project workers are required to apply for a Z visa if an uninterrupted stay in China is required," reports the Beijinger.
- Z visa holders are now coming under greater scrutiny now it seems, as the Globe and Mail reports. Apparently people are now getting their Z visas revoked:
Daniel Yeung is still trying to understand how it happened. After eight years of steady employment, the Canadian recruitment consultant is being kicked out of China, forced to join an exodus of foreigners streaming out of the host country ahead of the Beijing Olympics...
...when he tried to renew his work visa this spring, the Chinese authorities rejected his application. They said his educational qualifications, a diploma in physiotherapy, were inadequate for his job and he must have a bachelor's degree if he wanted to work as a consultant in China. It didn't matter that his employers were happy with his work, or that he was performing a useful service...
...One of his friends, a Norwegian businessman who owns his own company in China, is being kicked out this summer after 10 years in China because the government said he must have a graduate degree, Mr. Yeung said.
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The Globe article gives some of the answers without expressly doing so. The guy getting kicked out after 8 years has worked in various industries including a canadian government job at the embassy. Hmmm... didnt some canadians do some political protesting this past year about t!bet or something? anyhow, as unfair as it is it does seem the authorities THINk there is rhyme to their reason...sigh.
I think it's just as likely that Beijing is overreacting in the nerves department. Not just higher profile foreign businessmen, but even students and lowly tech guys are finding their leases "unrenewable" for a myriad of reasons.
Ironically, in advance of an Olympics show designed to propel China further forward in the arenas of world popularity, public image, and investor excitement, there is an odd feeling to me of sliding backward in time.
I think the Beijing Olympics are the impetus for this, and paranoia is a factor there. But I don't see this as the sole logic for the tightening as a whole. From what I understand, many of the laws in question (especially the Z visa) have been on the books for years.
As the number of foreigners visiting and working in China increases, it makes sense to me at least that China would improve and refine its visa policy. The "everything goes" policy can't be expected to continue indefinitely.
I can't however agree with the perception that this represents a slide backwards.
It seems to me the new visa policies for foreigners visiting China are now roughly comparable to visa policies for Chinese citizens visiting foreign countries, especially in the West.
By the way, much thanks to Shanghaiist for the love shown us at B4C/FoolsMountain in recent days/weeks. :)
I guess I should correct myself--not a reaction to the Olympics so much as a reaction to March 14th, and the chaos that followed, all of it then pressurized even more by the Olympics, which pressure was partially responsible for the overreaction on March 14 to begin with.
So, Beijing's completely nervous about everything looking as good as possible leading up to the Olympics, perfectly logical to be so; then overreacts horribly in Lhasa. The resultant world outcry was so horrifying, in turn, to CCP leadership, that it is regressing even further into a past we all remember and fear, filled with crackdowns and random searches and people disappearing in the night.
I'm not slamming China--here in the US we've gone down similar roads lately, on a smaller scale.
I guess I should correct myself--not a reaction to the Olympics so much as a reaction to March 14th, and the chaos that followed, all of it then pressurized even more by the Olympics, which pressure was partially responsible for the overreaction on March 14 to begin with.
So, Beijing's completely nervous about everything looking as good as possible leading up to the Olympics, perfectly logical to be so; then overreacts horribly in Lhasa. The resultant world outcry was so horrifying, in turn, to CCP leadership, that it is regressing even further into a past we all remember and fear, filled with crackdowns and random searches and people disappearing in the night.
I'm not slamming China--here in the US we've gone down similar roads lately, on a smaller scale.
Roughly comparable? At least after jumping through the hoops the U.S. government sets up, there is a potential endpoint. If you do everything right you can get permanent residence or even citizenship. However, in China if you don't have a drop of pure Han blood (or minority blood?) you don't have a snowball's chance in hell of staying for longer than a year. (Wait, you could also invest billions of dollars and stay for 5 years at most)
I ran into the same problem with my Z visa. I was doing sales, but my degree wasn't in sales. I don't know many universities that have "sales" degree programs because anybody who has the ability to convince people to buy stuff can do sales, it's not like advanced particle physics. Apparently in the Chinese technocracy, degrees get that specific, however, most universities in the US don't even list your major on the degree (just BA, BS). It really says something about China's gratefulness to its investors when they kick people out who have been contributing to their development for so long.
You could call them comparable if the associated bureaucracies and regulations were both efficient and clear cut. Unfortunately, as frustrating as the American bureaucracy is at times, it still has China beat. (It took the government 3 months to even admit there were any changes/belated enforcements regarding visas.) I mean seriously, this comparability argument is the equivalent of trying to clean the crap off an ugly pig.
Actually, it's not easy for a foreigner to stay in the U.S either. It took me 6 months and hundreds of dollars of application fees to just get the Employment Authorization Documents in the U.S. during which I was not allowed to work. And if you can't find a job that's in the field of your major within 3 months after your graduation (Optional Practical Training period), then you'll just have to leave the U.S.
If you find a job in the field of your major within 3 months after your graduation, then you have to ask your employer to apply a work visa for you, which would cost your employer thousands of dollars. So it's not easy to convince your employer to apply for a work visa for you when hiring a U.S citizen could be cheaper and free of tons of bureaucratic paper works.
If your employer is willing to apply for a work visa for you before 1st April (the one and only chance you got), then U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services will conduct the computer-generated random selection processes on work visa petitions(like a lottery). There's a quota of 85,000 work visas in total, and there are 163,000 petitions received just in the first five days of the eligible filing period.
If you win the work visa lottery, then you will get your visa 6 months later, then you can work in the U.S for 6 years at most. But you can apply for a green card if you want to, which would take about 6 years and another thousands of dollars. If you want to get a citizenship, that's even more difficult.
Trust me, No single step in the way is easy, once any of your document get lost during the process, which happens a lot at the post office, you'll just have to start all over again. And once you missed any deadline, there's no second chance.Evey documents take at least 3 months to process, it's definitely a pain in the ass.
In fact, it's not easy to get a student visa to get in the U.S to begin with. And any expensive processing fees occurred during the process is not a breeze for an average Chinese family. Anyway, China is known for its crappy bureaucracy for a long long time, but it's not much better in the U.S either in terms of visa stuff, especially after 9/11.
No it's not easy to get into the US. You're right, and that was not my point. My point is that after all the crap you have to go through to be able to stay...YOU GET TO STAY. China has no similar option. The most disturbing thing about this new enforcement is that for those who have married a Chinese national, they can only stay for 1-3 months, thus China is now in the business of breaking up families. I don't have a problem with China finally enforcing the rules, I'll jump through the hoops, but if I have to cut through tons of red tape only to be given a 1 month stay with my family, then what's the use? Personally, I don't know why any foreign business would even think about setting up in China in the near future. The old labor argument isn't applicable anymore, and now they won't even allow extended stays for foreign employees. Anybody think Hong Kong is going to see more and more investment because of these trends?
(Titro-your great understanding of the visa application process in the states only proves my point about transparency. At least, you are aware of the intricacies of the process, while over the last few months, we've had to rely on rumors to figure out exactly what the heck the Chinese government is up to.)
I totally understand your frustration. My application for the Employment Authorization Documents was messed up by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services,so I didn't even get the chance to win a work visa lottery, and that's why I have to leave the U.S. I don't get to stay, so I know how it feels when you're forced to leave because some stupid reasons.
It's so sad that you have to rely on rumors to make your next step, the government should have issued some official documents on this issue on some official website and clarify the process. I guess the government still don't know how to handle Olympics and whatever comes with it anyway.
Hope everything will work out fine for you in the end.
So this is all in Beijing, right? I've read this post several times, along with all the comments and links, and I still can't find the facts. My guess is that if the right person wants you out, you are out. I can't tell if yu888 is trying to implicate this Canadian guy or explain the official ad hominem reasoning, but he manages to accomplish both. Maybe it's just a corollary to increased law enforcement, and if that gets out of hand, all foreigners will indubitably be in the shit house. Maybe overlapping bureaus or ministries don't have complementary policies. It would be nice to see something that clarifies rather than confuses. When is that post coming?
=="buy your Olympic tickets, but you may not get your China visa"?
If I bought a house in USA, would I necessarily and naturaly be able to get a visa, even if I agree to be finger printed?
If you guy dont like China, stay home; If you dont like Beijing Olympic, watch it with your remote control. Just stop nagging and leave China alone.
eastman:
China wants to be a global player. China wants respect on the global level. China wants to open up and extend its influence into the rest of the world. That's all well and good.
But if that's what China wants, Chinese people are going to have to get used to criticism from the rest of the world. China can't expect everyone to simply If not, perhaps China should go back to self-imposed isolation, keep everyone else out, and leave the rest of the world alone.
Time to get over the hurt-feelings teenager reaction to criticism. And time to learn not to use dopey analogies (buying a house=buying a ticket to Olympics).
[corrected]
eastman:
China wants to be a global player. China wants respect on the global level. China wants to open up and extend its influence into the rest of the world. That's all well and good.
But if that's what China wants, Chinese people are going to have to get used to criticism from the rest of the world. China can't expect everyone else to simply accept its way of doing things uncritically. If that's a problem, perhaps China should go back to self-imposed isolation, keep everyone else out, and leave the rest of the world alone.
Time to get over the hurt-feelings teenager reaction to criticism. And time to learn not to use dopey analogies (buying a house=buying a ticket to Olympics).
I don't think the US has a "real estate visa" but I think Canada and Australia do, so in those countries you could buy a house and get a visa for at least long term visits.
Bad, double dealing China.