One of the trickiest part of coming to China for an internship, maybe even more than finding a company, is to get a proper visa. The reason is that it is simply forbidden by the Chinese government to accept foreigners as intern in order to let more opportunities for the local students.
You could of course go for a tourist Visa and that will be fine as long as they don’t catch you to do so in which case the consequences can be very regrettable. There is however a legal way to bypass this restriction which will be explained in this article based on my own experience, and this way is to go for a Business visa or M visa. Holding this visa you won’t exactly be considered as an intern but more like a business consultant and this has few implication that you need to be aware of when applying for the visa.
First of all, ask your company to write you an invitation letter where they don’t mention your salary. This is very important since with this you are considered as a business man wishing to have a mutual cooperation with the Chinese company and who therefore doesn’t expect any financial rewards. It can also really raise your chances to include in your visa application any sign of wealth of your own such as a bank or salary statement as this will emphasize that you don’t come to get paid.
Second thing, when you fill up the application form, you can mention that you are a student but do also mention that you are a “self-entrepreneur” and that the reason of your trip is business. Do not include any letter from your university as this will lead them to think that you come for an internship.
Now where it gets a bit difficult is that for this kind of visa, you need to have an accommodation and a return flight ticket set up in advance. But since there is still a chance that your visa get refused, you don’t want to have paid for that for nothing. The tips is to only get bookings and that works.
Airline company such as AirFrance allows you to have a “change your mind option” where you only pay 15 euros to have a flight ticket you can buy within 3 days. The good thing is that they will send you an email with this ticket and with a bit of photo editing, it is very easy to make it looking like a real one.
For the accommodation, they will require you to have at least a one month booking in advance. You can get easily get this by taking two 2 weeks booking on Hostelworld.com who only make you pay a very small fee for it.
Lastly, the easiest type of M visa to get is a two entry one with 30 days for each entry. This mean that you will have to go out of the territory every 30 days and come back, by going to Hong Kong for example. And after two months, you will have to ask for an extension within China by going to the Public Security Bureau of your municipality.
The company Hongzhou Learning is currently recruiting many foreign interns in Beijing within the marketing field. You can contact them at this address: studyinchina@hzlearning.com
