In 2017,China has come out tremendous changes in the policies related to trading environments, bank accounts, Chinese visas. Under such policies, as a foreigner in China, you may come across the following problems.
So do you know how such policies work and what should you pay attention to? Let’s see!
Bank accounts got
investigated or shut down
Your Chinese or HK bank accounts got investigated or shut down, in such case, your money can not come in or go out of China in a legal way.
China and HongKong two regions further regulate the banking industries and trading environment, numerous bank accounts have been shut down or frozen, due to improperly use bank accounts to receive payment.
Many people's bank accounts constantly meet different problems in transactions. Here are some cases:
Nick has been worked at trading for more than 10 years, he has an offshore bank account of China Merchants Bank (CMB) to receive foreign exchanges.
However, one of the transfers from a client was interrupted and held by the bank, due to the country of receiving cargo is different from that making the payment.
Tim has an offshore bank account after registering a HongKong company. Recently, the bank gives him many warnings, he is requested to open a mainland company to connect to his offshore bank account, or they take action to shut down his account.
Higher standards in banking drive the trading environment to be more regulated, stricter verification for bank account holders.
International transactions constantly suffered from interventions. It leads to receiving foreign currencies, exchanging foreign currencies into RMB, or transferring overseas becomes more difficult.
More difficult to apply for a
Chinese work visa or visa renewal
In China, work permits are issued by Foreign Experts Bureau, and visa is released by immigration. Before giving the permission for ones' application, they have the power to have an overall verification of applicant's background and their companies.
For companies, all the trading data in China Customs must be perfectly consistent with each income or expense in their bank account transfer record.
Companies have very little records from the database of China Customs, banks, Tax Bureau, we call them "zombie" company, and these "zombie" companies hardly can pass the verification, it results in a failure of work permit/visa application.
Old trading way of
buying documents is illegal
Buying documents is an unsafe way of trading, spending a few hundred yuan to pay for an agent, and the agent uses the name of an unknown company to export for you. In this activity, the agent can use fake VAT invoice to apply for export tax refund and cheat on the government.
Buying documents is part of a reason why a trading company becomes a "zombie" company, any trading activities of this company in the system of China Customs are NOT under its name!
Money has to return back by personal bank accounts or underground agents. This is the most common but illegal way of doing trading business in China. That is also one of the reasons why some foreigners' bank accounts get frozen and fail to pass the work permit application.
HACOS,Business Services Solutions Master