Since many researchers are here on some cobbled-together amalgam of dodgy Z visas, F visas, and/or multiple extensions of an L visa…the pre-Olympic “harmonization” of the foreign community may have implications for research plans in the PRC beginning this month:
From Today in China:
I received the following notification from the company for which I’m working.
In the meeting held by the Exit & Entry Administration Ministry of Beijing on July 12, 2007 afternoon, expats’ visa application process were revised as following:From July 16,2007 till the end of the Olympic games in 2008, in order to ensure the security of Beijing, during the 2008 Olympic Games, the Ministry of Public Security will carry on strictly foreign management in China.
1. If applicants enter China with L, F visa, the visa cannot be transformed to other visa types. (Except for the applicant’s job title is above vice president, legal representative of the company, director, or foreign representative office’s leader).
2. The urgent application (express visa service) cannot be accepted by the government for the time being.
3. When foreigners with L, F visa need to extend their staying in Beijing, the applicants need to do the visa extension personally, and need to present the company’s business license as supporting.
4. The applicants applying for the residence permit for the first entry will need to the application personally; also need to present the company’s business license as supporting.
5. The applicants who apply for the residence permit extension need to provide their employment permits, or the representative permits and company’s business license as supporting.
Obviously this is a development worth watching for for anyone planning on making a research trip in the coming year. As for me, my Z visa seems safe…for now.
Thanks to Thierry at Today in China for the heads up.
4 responses so far ↓
1 The Humanaught // Jul 20, 2007 at 12:56 am
Thanks for the heads up. I’m on a Z visa but in that weird process of switching stuff for going to school. I am assuming this doesn’t just apply for people here for research? As half the ESL teachers in China are on F visas, this can potentially affect a load of people.
PS: Can you link to the smaller graphic for the Free Oiwan Lam thing? You’ve got the large one linked to, but are resizing it - aside from it screwing up the resolution when displayed, it also needlessly uses bandwidth
Just change the “-lrg” in the file name to “-sml” and you’ll be golden.
2 花崗齋之愚公 // Jul 20, 2007 at 1:11 am
Ryan,
Done. By the way, kudos to you for all of your hard work on Oiwan’s behalf.
3 The Humanaught // Jul 21, 2007 at 8:52 pm
Honestly, I don’t deserve the praise. There are folks that are working a lot harder on this than I am. I just happen to believe in what she’s fighting against and am happy to help get the word out about it.
4 Anonymous // Jul 27, 2007 at 11:31 am
Looks like Beijing is either 1. wanting to swap out its existing crop of foreign devils for new ones (who are less China savvy and will take a while to develop a good blog) or 2. get rid of foreingers who Beijing thinks could be replaced by Chinese (non-english teaching) or by new foreigners who will be all starry eyed and naive about China for at least a year (and won’t have caustic and informative blogs for a while).
nanheyangrouchuan
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