The Beijing Bureau of Al Jazeera English has been forced to shut down, because Chinese authorities have revoked the visa of Melissa Chan, its Chinese correspondent, and refused to allow any replacement. more ›

China state-owned media is once again reporting a crackdown on foreigners who live, work and travel the country without the proper credentials. more ›

US ambassador to China Gary Locke has announced a new interview waiver pilot program that is expected to make it easier for Chinese nationals to visit the United States. Under the new program, consular officers will have the power to waive interviews for some qualified non-immigrant applicants who are renewing their visa within 48 months of expiration of their previously held visa. more ›

Nicholas English of City Weekend posed as a parent and walked straight into a parent-teacher meeting Wednesday night at Shanghai Rego International School’s Minhang campus. Teachers at the school, he found, were not here on proper work visas, and the school was having trouble paying them on time: more ›

The Shanghai police has sent out a reminder of its warning to foreigners without work visas not to look for employment in the city. If found out, you'll be fined and deported, they said. more ›

Odd story of the day: A Singaporean man who has been overstaying in Beijing for six years escaped from a Chinese jail term by tampering with his passport so as to get repatriated. The story via the Straits Times: more ›

Why are the young and prominently cheek-boned of this world always unfairly singled out for punishment? Sigh. Five 20-ish models of eastern European extraction were deported after they were caught strutting runways without work permits in Shanghai's Xuhui district. The five foreign fashion femmes, all in Shanghai on tourist visas, began walking the runway at an "entertainment venue" on Yishan Road in July, in a bid to attract customers. The models reportedly also serviced worked other venues, club-hopping from place to place throughout the course of an evening. It's unconfirmed whether the incident is related to the 20-year-old Slovakian model who died in Xuhui early Tuesday morning, though police state the models were discovered during a random check last month. The models left the country after serving a detention lasting several days, and received a fine of less than 1000RMB. more ›

Weibo netizens have continued their pursuit of Guo Meimei and the Red Cross Society. Guo announced last week that she was planning to take a trip to Australia with her mom to "wave goodbye to all her troubles." The post was deleted, but screenshots survived. more ›

We informed you a while ago that expatriates in Shanghai can now apply for the two-year residence permit. Our friends at City Weekend have figured out how to go about getting it done, but first, you need to figure out if you're eligible:

First up, almost anyone can apply if they’ve been working in Shanghai for a decent length of time. Anyone whose had a “Residence Card B” for two years (this covers all foreign nationals legally living here) is eligible, as are managers, legal representatives or high-tech workers with companies registered in Shanghai. If you’re just an “ordinary person” in a company worth over US$30 million, you’re up for it as well. more ›

"FOREIGNERS living in Shanghai can now apply for a two-year residence permit, a service launched this month by Shanghai police, authorities said yesterday. The Exit & Entry Administration of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau said the application process can be done online and also covers other resident permits and visas. Applicants can visit the official website of the bureau, www.police.sh.cn, to download application forms in English and make an appointment to submit their application in person. Those who can read and write Chinese can submit their application online. Once the application is submitted, applicants will be notified the next day of how long it will take to process the application. The bureau opened a special window for the service on the third floor of its office at 1500 Minsheng Road in the Pudong New Area. Since the online visa and residence application service for foreigners was launched in January 2009, more than 15,000 visas and permits have been issued, officials said. Online applications increased 31.8 percent last year compared with 2009." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

"SIX foreigners from Southeast Asia and Europe, who were caught by police during a crackdown on group renting, were deported for overstaying their visas after serving detentions, the Shanghai Exit-Entrance Administration Bureau said yesterday. The six shared a 30-square-meter apartment on Xiangyang Road. Neighbors frequently complained they made noise. Police found folding beds on the balcony and in a corridor. None of them had jobs here and their visas had expired at least six months ago." [Shanghai Daily] more ›

File this under stupid Shanghai expats:

A European man was fined and deported for altering his visa without authorization, the Shanghai Exit-Entrance Administration said today. more ›

This has got to be the most scandalous MMF love triangle ever, and the most epic visa extension FAIL all rolled into one! more ›

For those of you that like sorting out your visa problems yourself, ie., without the help of a visa agency, here's a website that you should probably bookmark. more ›

Shanghai's Exit-Entry Administration Bureau is warning foreigners to watch out for fraudulent visa agents after several people have been scammed... some even losing their passports. It said that over 50% of the 100 foreigners it put under detention in 2009 had overstayed after failing to get their visa from agents. The Shanghai Exit-Entry Administration Bureau suggests you go through them if you want to extend your visa, and to call 2895-1900 for more information. We suggest you use a little Magic. more ›

As if it wasn't annoying enough already that the 60th anniversary was going to give us visa problems, China's now allegedly using swine flu as a reason to tighten visa rules for citizens from the United States. According to the AP, a May 3 notice said that all U.S. visa applications, including tourist and business categories, will now require six business days to process - express and rush services will be suspended until further notice. Applicants will also need to fill out a form declaring which countries and U.S. states they have visited in the last two weeks. China has denied discriminating against specific countries and insisted that “the adjustment of visa policy will not affect the normal entry of foreigners and exchanges of people.” more ›

The deviant little grass mud horse has struck again - only this time, it's a real alpaca rather than an internet one that's the center of this controversy. According to Forbes Asia, two Chinese men used an elaborate scam to trick an oblivious 74-year-old Tennessean Alpaca farmer into giving them business visas. more ›

So while some of us are struggling with our visas, fearful that the 60th anniversary might screw up our chances of staying in this country somehow, a newspaper has informed us that maybe there was a way for us to enter Shanghai without that coveted, gov't-stamped document. more ›

City Weekend has an interesting look at some of the troubles that face Chinese bands trying to widen their appeal abroad. Recently, Wuhan punk band SMZB had an opportunity to tour the U.S. after being invited to participate at Washington D.C.'s Shamrock Festival. Unfortunately, they never made it there, thanks to visa problems: more ›

... so says our favourite visa agency. In November, regulations were loosened to allow for the 3-6 month F visa, but since 6 December, the 12 month multiple-entry F visa has been made available again. Does the global economic crisis and dwindling tourist numbers have anything to do with this? Maybe, but who cares, really? Check for VisaInChina's updated services and price list here. more ›

For those of you still wondering if the pre-Olympic easy visa days are going to return or not, here's your answer. They are a thing of the past, so don't look back because they ain't coming back anytime soon. Three months after the Beijing Olympics, the police are still maintaining their vigilance and conducting spot checks by knocking on residential apartments and offices to see if you are really what your visa application says you are. A Filipino maid has just been ordered to leave China for falsifying her documents. In her application for a residence permit in September, she claimed to be a Shanghai branch representative of an international company but was later found by the police to be working as a maid for an executive of a foreign-invested company. [Source] more ›

We're sure this latest visa report from Reuters will be like music to the ears of some of you who have been waiting a few months to hear this:

Visa curbs on foreigners travelling into China via Hong Kong as part of a security clampdown during the Beijing Olympics will be lifted next month, a major travel industry association said yesterday. more ›

Video: polskipekin follows three groups of artists around Beijing and asks them for their take on what it means to be painting in a rapidly evolving China [h/t Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei] more ›

The Shanghai municipal government has flat-out denied that F visa applications have been suspended as earlier reports in foreign media suggested, saying that "the reports did not conform to the truth". While admitting that "some related authorities adjusted the procedures of visa applications ahead of the Beijing Olympics in order to forestall possible security threats", a spokesperson has said that over 500 applications per day have been processed in the first half of this year, a rise of more than 170 percent from last year. [Shanghai Daily] more ›

Trouble with visa renewal is one thing, but forced deportation is quite another. Foreigners whining about the former should take a look at the recent case of Dechen Pemba, a Brit of Tibetan descent who was detained, driven to the airport, and expelled from the PRC for five years when she walked out of her Beijing apartment last Tuesday. The seven plain clothes policemen who escorted Pemba allowed her only time to pack a bag, refusing to let her call her family or the British embassy until she was sitting on an Air China plane. more ›

We've been writing a lot about the visa situation recently, which has gotten more and more bothersome as the Olympics approach. But this tactic is a new one: Matt of bizCult gives us a play-by-play of his experiences using a student visa... for business purposes. Pros: easier to obtain, multiple entry, much cheaper. Cons: actually having to go to class sometimes, like the Mongolian prostitutes using the same strategy. All in all, Matt gives the method a B++, which is probably better than his GPA, since he skipped his finals. more ›

With less than six weeks before the Games, the Chinese visa situation Shanghaiist reported on earlier this month is not getting any better. Many foreign residents living here for years are now being forced to leave China, and some of them are reconsidering "how much of their operations they keep in China," Andrew Work, executive director of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, said. The Wall Street Journal follows a story similar to that of Canadian Daniel Yeung in the Globe and Mail. John T. McAlister, the American co-founder of a scientific-research company, leaves China today after making it his home for the past eight years. Through a series of complications, McAlister had been forced to live on a renewed F (temporary business) visa for the past six months. When it was time to switch to a Z visa, many of the registered companies he appealed to to sponsor him had trouble providing him with working papers. McAlister was told he was too old to qualify for proper work permits (he is 71), but wasn’t told what the official cutoff age was. "The problem about all of this is the suddenness and enforcement of rules that may have existed always but are hard to accommodate in a short period of time," McAllister told WSJ. more ›

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.

African nationals in the city have been running small businesses on flexible, six-month ``F'' visas and are now being given only tourist visas of up to 15 days, the Morning Post said. more ›

• Via Danwei: For the first time, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has acknowledged that visa procedures have been tightened. Said Qin Gang, according to the AP:

  "We have made some arrangements according to usual international practice. That is, in the approval process we are more strict and more serious with the procedure," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. more ›