Choose the route for your planned activity
For a scouting trip, define the meetings and activities you plan to undertake and check the entry conditions that apply to you. For ongoing work, check the relevant work-authorisation and residence requirements. Beijing also publishes an entrepreneur residence-permit route for qualifying applicants; its conditions need to be assessed against your circumstances.
Describe your activity, intended duration and existing company or employer. That is enough to identify the questions that need an official answer before you commit to travel, incorporation or a long lease.
Confirmed facts
Lawful entry, accommodation registration, company incorporation, work authorization and residence authorization are separate systems. A company can have an investor or shareholder without automatically creating permission for that person to work in China; a work permit and a residence document are likewise not interchangeable.
Beijing publishes separate guidance for foreign work permits, residence permits, entrepreneur-endorsed private-affairs residence permits, and foreign-invested enterprise setup. Those guides are useful starting points, but the competent authority decides the applicable process from the individual’s facts and current rules.
Build the founder route in sequence
A lawful visitor or visa-free entrant can usually begin the practical front end of the project: meet advisers, inspect premises, develop the company plan and, where the facts permit, begin incorporation steps. Treat that period as preparation for the operating route—not as the operating route itself.
If the founder will work for the company in China or remain for the longer term, map the work-permit, visa and residence sequence early. Some cases require an appropriate visa or an exit-and-re-entry step; the decisive question is the founder’s actual role and current status.
- Describe the real activity accurately before choosing a route.
- Use the current official entry and visa-free notice for the first status check.
- Prepare the intended company’s investment access, business scope, address, tax and compliance facts as a separate entity brief.
- Take the work and residence sequence to the responsible immigration or work-permit office before the founder begins that role in China.
The line between preparation and operation
A visitor status, incorporation filing, investor role and OPC label can all be real parts of a founder plan. They answer different questions. Work and residence permission are the next operating gates, rather than benefits that appear automatically when the company file opens.
Use this page to choose the route and assemble the right factual brief; use the live official procedure or qualified adviser for the current documents and case-specific decision.
Continue through the founder decision
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Evidence and sources
The linked materials are the published starting points. The Chinese text and the responsible authority’s current interpretation control where a source, translation or local practice differs.