Think Getting a Chinese Green Card is Impossible?  Think Again.

Think getting a Chinese Green Card is Impossible?

 Think Again.

The Lunatic’s Guide to getting a Chinese Green Card

Many people still think that getting a Chinese Green Card is impossible, unless you happen to be a prize-winning scientist, a famous athlete, or have large piles of money to invest in China (and that your odds will be better if you are rich and famous athletic who just patented some new breakthrough in quantum computing ).

Yes, all of that would be good, but what about the rest of us?  There are still quite a few middle-class people who aren’t all that athletic and were cruelly overlooked when grants for research on cutting edge alternate pizza toppings were handed out.  Despite this, some of us are very ready to settle down and be long-term contributors to Chinese society.

Before I get started, let me warn you that it’s a lot of work.  So, if you don’t REALLY love China and don’t plan to spend the majority of your time in China for many years, then stick to residence permits, business visas, or tourist visas.

If you do deeply love China and plan to be here for many years (or, like me, forever), then looking into getting a green card is a good idea.  Being a Lunatic also helps.

Information and Misinformation about Chinese Green Cards

When I was trying to figure out how to apply, I was stunned at the amount of misinformation out there.  Claims that Green Cards were virtually impossible to get were common.  I found a number of articles that completely mixed up the concept of Green Card Holder vs. Citizen.  Some even mixed up “honorary citizens” into the discussions.

A green card is for permanent residency.  It grants many rights and a few superpowers that are not normally available to foreigners, but does not confer citizenship (I plan another article on the topic of citizenship later).  Chinese green cards need to be renewed every 10 years.  Not very many people have had one long enough to need a renewal, so I don’t have any information about that procedure.

I was told by so many people that getting a green card was impossible.  The law of the People’s Republic of China says it is possible and that I was on track to be qualified.  If I’d believed what people told me, instead of what the law says, I could have joined the defeatist “It’s impossible!” chorus and not bothered to apply. Instead, I put it to the test by applying. Getting a green card is definitely not impossible.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t have my very own Chinese green card.

I do have to warn you about one very important thing.  When I got my green card, I was very surprised to see that it wasn’t green.

How to Qualify for a Chinese Green Card

Qualification isn’t easy, but can be within reach for many people who really want to live in China for the long haul.

There are currently 7 categories of applicants.  All types of applicants must abide by Chinese laws, be in good health, and have no criminal record.  Then there are general rules for each category (and there are many more details you’ll need to file the application).

I researched all of them to find one I could qualify for.

1.  Make a direct investment in China that results in stable business operations  Also, a good tax-paying record for 3 years is required.  The amount needed varies from US$500,000 up to $2 million, depending on where in China the investment is made.  So, large investments can get you on the path to a green card, but you don’t need to be a billionaire.  Check with your local entry/exit bureau for the current requirements, since those could vary over time.

Oh man.  I had almost a million collecting dust in my desk, but then there was this really big sale on imported cheese and chocolate.  After that, I needed something requiring a much smaller budget.

2.  Be a deputy general manager, deputy factory director or above.  Or be an associate professor, associate research fellow, or other associate senior titles (or above);  Or somehow be the equivalent of these (ask your local entry/exit bureau).  And, you need to have held this level of job for at least 4 years, have spent a total of at least 3 of the last 4 years inside of China, and have a good tax-paying record.

Unfortunately for me, there are some specific rules about what level of institution the job needs to be at, and my job didn’t qualify.

3.  Make a great and outstanding contribution to China or be especially needed by China.

I was sadly disappointed to learn that all those years in Dragon Boats (both paddling and as a captain) without sinking one boat or losing any crew members weren’t enough to qualify me.

Captain Lunatic commanding a Dragon boat.

4.  Being the spouse or unmarried child (under 18) of one of the above.

Nope, that didn’t work for me either, but I still wanted a Chinese green card?  Was all hope lost?  Maybe I could get lucky playing the lottery?

5.  I’ll get back to this one in a minute.

6.  Be unmarried, under 18, and come to China to live with your parents in China.

I’m married, far above 18, and my parents don’t want to move to China just so I can use them to get citizenship.  And they’d need to either be Chinese or hold a Chinese green card.

7.  Be 60+ years old (), have no direct relatives outside of China, have sponsoring relatives in China, and have lived in China for at least 9 months per year for 5 consecutive years.  Stable income and residence are also needed.

If all my overseas relatives die by the time I’m 60 and my Chinese wife counts as a relative, this might work.  I’m not 60 and really don’t want to wait that long to get my application in.  Plus there’s no guarantee some of my relatives might not decide to live a lot longer.

Let’s get back to #5.

Marriage to a Chinese citizen or a foreigner who already has a green card for at least 5 years.  Plus at least 5 years consecutive residence in China (at least 9 months each year), and having stable income and housing.

That worked for me.   By the time I sat down and was carefully checking all the options, I was married to a lovely Chinese woman.  I even got a daughter as part of the bargain.  (Getting married in China is an adventure!) The longest I’ve been out of China in any calendar year since moving in permanently was about 2 months total.

Paperwork Needed to Apply for a Chinese Green Card

All applicants in all categories need (ask your local entry-exit bureau how many copies of each – mine wanted 2):

1.  An application form for foreigners permanent residence in China.  Unlike the card the application form itself really is green.

The Chinese Green Card Application Form Really Is Green

2.  A copy of your valid passport.

3.  A recent health certificate. (simplest – get it in China.  If you’ve been there for a while, you probably have already had this done a few times.)

4.  A recent certificate of no criminality from your home country certified by the Chinese Embassy or Consulate in your home country.

4.a.  If you’ve been in China for any significant time, chances are they will also ask for a non-criminality certificate from your local police station.  Thankfully, this doesn’t need to be certified by an embassy or consulate.

5.  Four recent full color 2″ by 2″ photos.  No hats or glasses, ears exposed.  (Escaped Lunatic Tips:  Ask entry-exit what background color. They wanted white for mine, but may change this at some point in the future.  Also, ask the photo studio for a police certificate to go with the photos. This is standard in China for any sort of official photo for an ID or visa.)

Get the latest details on how to get a Chinese Green Card from the Entry/Exit Bureau

For green card by 5 years of marriage, there are some additional documents:

1. A copy of your Chinese spouse’s ID and hukou or foreign spouse’s green card.

2. Copies of your marriage(s)/booklets.  In China, each member of the happy couple gets their own booklet.

3.  A notarized certificate of the source of income.

4.  A house lease certificate or a deed to a home.

When you apply, bring ALL the originals with you, as the people on the other side of the desk will be making careful comparisons to be sure your copies aren’t fake.

Other documents can be added at any time.  Local requirements may also come into play.  Dongguan required an amount of money to be frozen in a bank account for at least 6 months. Shenzhen requires a different amount.  One friend of mine in another province was told he did not qualify because he only rented and did not have a deed.  Check with the friendly officers at your local entry-exit bureau to get the absolute latest list of requirements, unless you want to make 10 trips to get your paperwork accepted.  I asked a year before applying for the most recent list.  Then I checked for updates a week before submitting my application to minimize the chances of missing something.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

So far, if you are already qualified, it sounds easy.  Dig up a bunch of papers, make copies, turn them in. For me, the first thing I had to do was deal with having to wait another 4 years for my 5th wedding anniversary.

Used with permission from Woot.com – see bottom of page for more info

The US non-criminality certificate came with some extra difficulties.  In the US, these are done by the FBI.  At the time, self-finger printing wasn’t an option, so I needed a law enforcement officer to take the prints.

Conveniently, I had a short trip to the USA planned about 6 months before my 5th wedding anniversary.  Unfortunately, I was staying somewhere far, far out in the countryside in Florida.  The closest local police station had prints done by volunteers, not by professional fingerprint technicians.  Worse, it was storming, so the already imperfect prints ended up also being less crisp than they should have been.  When those prints made it to the FBI, they said “Not good enough, try again.”

There are 2 ways to get your FBI Identity History Summary aka Background Check or Certificate of Non-criminality (unless you are a convicted criminal, in which case it’s a Certificate of criminality).  The first is you mail it in your self and wait.  The other is to pay an FBI Channeler to use psychic powers to move your certificate through the system.  This costs more, but at least the answers are quick.  And with a channeler, nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong.  (Update: Now it can be also be done via submission of electronic fingerprints at a US Post Office, but I did this long before e-fingerprinting became almost the default.)

So, my channeler alerted me to the failure of the first set of prints.  Finding someone who could do properly rolled fingerprints wasn’t an option in my city.  Shenzhen and Guangzhou had services for this, but those were very expensive.  The central police station in Hong Kong does it for free, so I went there.

The prints were much clearer than the ones I had done in the US.  The only hard part was convincing the fingerprint expert that the FBI really wanted 2 sets.

Then I had a new problem.  My channeler wasn’t replying to emails.  I finally found out that he lost the business during a messy divorce.  I decided it was time for a new channeler.

One EMS envelope to a new channeler in the US later and I had an electronic copy of my FBI document which shows that although I might be crazy, I’m not a criminal.

Next, the document needed to be sent to the US Department of State to be authenticated.  For some bizarre reason. FBI channelers are forbidden to deal with apostilles or authentication of FBI background checks.  For cases where both countries are members of the “Apostille sounds so much cooler than authenticate” club, I’d have needed it apostilled.  Since China agrees with me that apostille sounds silly, I had to be VERY specific with the apostille service that I really wanted it authenticated.

That went well.  Happily for me, there was no rule forbidding the company that got the State Department authentication from taking the document to the Chinese Embassy in Washington DC for Chinese certification.  When I got it back, I was surprised that Chinese certification was a holographic sticker instead of a big red rubber stamp.  I didn’t think anything in China was valid without a big red rubber stamp.

A local criminal background check from my village police station was quicker and easier (and free!).

The other papers were all gathered.  My 5th wedding anniversary was on April 1st, 2016. (Only Lunatics get married on April Fools’ Day.)  The plan was to celebrate by dropping in to visit Dongguan’s main entry/exit desk that deals with foreigners.
Two copies of EVERYTHING were needed.  My printer/copier was acting up just to slow things down. My wife’s marriage booklet had found some carefully crafted “safe place” to hide where it couldn’t be found.  We decided to try with just mine instead of searching the house yet again for it.

We arrived at about 4 pm.   I’d just gotten my new residence permit a week or so earlier and they already knew to expect me.  Unfortunately, the officer who usually deals with me was on vacation and the one who took the application had something in common with me.  For both of us, it was the first time dealing with a green card application.

During the careful document comparison ritual, the missing marriage booklet fell out from between some other original documents that had been carefully placed in a folder a few days earlier.  That resolved one small potential crisis.

Finally, all comparisons were made, all copies were verified as true, and both sets were placed in the official correct order.  All checkboxes on all needed documents were checked.  The officer promised to call my wife if anything else was needed.  We were told it would take somewhere from 5 months to a year to be processed, with 6-9 months being most probable.

We headed out to celebrate.  We made it all the way to the bus stop in front of the building when her phone rang.  It turns out that the same desk that’s processed my ALL my residence permits needed 2 copies of each residence permit since I’d permanently moved to China in 2010.  We had 10 minutes before the office closed.

We ran across the street to the nearest copy shop.  2 copies of everything from my 2010 Z visa to the residence permit issued a week before were made and we dashed back and got in just before they locked the doors.

Strangely, the up-front fee wasn’t collected up-front.  Evidently, some level of initial checking was needed before they’d take the money.

Something I’d been planning since before my 1st wedding anniversary had been accomplished.  I had a receipt for a Chinese green card application with my 5th wedding anniversary date on it.

Then the day got even better.  The veterinarian called to let us know that our recently acquired kitten, Stripy Emperor, was improving.  Adding a cat to the family was also part of my permanent settling down in China.  I’d planned to get one after the green card application was filed, but one thing led to another and we got a kitten a little earlier than planned and he ended up in the vet’s intensive care unit.  You can read more about me getting a cat in China here.

The Long Wait

Nearly two months of silence followed. No phone calls.  No letters.  No one asking around the village to see what un upright member of the community I was. I’d read stories claiming that this had happened to some other green card candidate somewhere.  Maybe that person rated a more thorough in-person check or maybe he was just paranoid.

On May 29th, 2016, the phone rang.  My application was sufficiently processed for me to pay the fee.  As time progresses, so do the payment methods at the entry/exit police station.  At that point, this particular fee had to be paid at a nearby bank.  By the time my lovely wife and I located the correct bank, it had closed for the day, so we had to pay after the weekend.

Another call came on June 14th.  I’d thought paying the fee meant Dongguan was done and my application had already been sent up to provincial level in Guangzhou.  Instead, it was still in Dongguan and they’d decided I needed to provide a CV, covering all jobs since I was 18.  Even skipping a little freelance yard work, it was a long list.  Then my wife had to find time to translate it all into Chinese.  She was very busy with several other things, so it didn’t get turned in until June 29th.

So, the bad news was more paperwork needed.  The good news was that no reason to reject the application had been found so far.
Silence again until September 29th, 2016.  Someone at some unidentified level of the land of Green Card Processing called.  They noticed than I was born in Germany (I’m an army brat) and wanted to know if I was not just American, but if I was or ever had been a German citizen.

My father thought I was qualified for dual citizenship.  Sometime before ever coming to China, I got curious and looked it up.  Unlike those born in the US, me being born to non-German parents in Germany who have no intention of becoming permanent residents of Germany means two things.  Germany has no claim on me.  I have no claim on Germany.  On top of this, I was born at a hospital that’s part of an American military base.  That would mean that I was technically born inside of American territory.  I carefully laid out all these points and that seemed to be enough to resolve the question.

There was one little detail on my application receipt I hadn’t noticed when I got it.  There’s a slot for a tracking number.  It was blank.  After hearing nothing new all the way to January 23rd 2017, my wife went to visit the entry/exit officers to enquire further.  She was told that tracking numbers weren’t issued.  she was also told that it now seemed like 1 year was closer to the minimum, but not to worry until it had been at least 18 months.  Personally, I’m glad they do examine everything closely, but would have loved to have some way to check online and see what items I’ve successfully passed and what else remained to be done.

I applied for a new annual Residence Permit on March 21st 2017.  There was a different officer at the desk.  When he saw my Chinese name, he realized I was a green card applicant.  (There weren’t a lot of active green card applicants in Dongguan at any one moment then.  I assume the numbers are slowly increasing.)  He did have one useful bit of information for me.  He told me my application had already made it from Guangzhou to Beijing.  This was promising.  That 18 month timeline now looked possible.

“I am your father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate.”
“So what does that make us?”
“Absolutely nothing, unless we’re in China.”

Happily, I’m in China.  One of my wife’s former classmates had a classmate in college who knows someone who has a cousin who is the friend of someone who once met someone else who lives next door to someone who once lived across the street from someone who knows something about green card applications at the national level.

On August 24th, 2017, this close contact provided some information that made it easier for me to sleep at night.  Supposedly, my application made it to Beijing about 6 months or so after being filed.  The reason for the delay was that the newer rules for green cards had led to a growing backlog of applications.  In a way, this made sense.  There have been more people applying.  I’ll also guess that those applicants who are prize-winning scientists who also play professional basketball and are investing millions of dollars will get to jump ahead of my less impressive application.  Rich, famous, athletic scientists could get offers from elsewhere, but letting me wait longer could always be looked at as a test of how committed I really am to China.  Although I still felt a bit impatient, I was determined to wait it out.  I’m happy in China and slower than expected paperwork isn’t going to stop me.

One other detail was reassuring.  Supposedly. most Permanent Residence application denials happen at the local or provincial level.  Those that make it to Beijing supposedly have a pretty good chance of passing.  I can’t swear this is true, but it does make sense.  A friend joked that if they didn’t pass me in time, eventually I’d pass… on.  I told him that I was pretty sure they’d check to see if I was still married and still had a heartbeat before they’d finally hand me the card.

In March 2018, during my annual residence permit renewal, a couple of officers I hadn’t met before at the Dongguan entry/exit bureau told me that the last (only?) green card via marriage issued in Dongguan was 10 years ago.  These people believed that getting a green card based on marriage now would be impossible.  I was deeply disappointed to hear this, but I wasn’t going to give up.  At that point, China was integrating visa, green card, and other entry/exit functions into a Central Immigration Bureau and the Permanent Residency application process was supposed to be streamlined so that it would take a maximum of 6 months.  I decided to chalk up what I’d just been told to people who hadn’t kept up with the times and continued to wait (im)patiently.

Green at Last, Green at Last

789 days after applying, a bit after 4 in the afternoon on May 31st, 2018 my wife got a call.  She gets lots of calls, so I don’t normally attempt to use my limited Chinese to figure out what’s being said.  I do tend to pay more attention when I hear my Chinese name coming up in conversation and the conversation sounded a little more serious than usual.  Before I could figure out if this was THE call I’d been waiting 2 years and 2 months for, she hung up.  Then she told me the card had arrived and that she’d said that we’d collect it tomorrow.

We had until 5:30 before the Entry/Exit Bureau shut down. After all that time, I was not going to wait another day, so I said “Let’s go!”

It was supposed to be at the same desk as everything else I do at Entry/Exit, but there was one small problem when we arrived.  No one out front knew where the card was.   It took a little digging around in one of the back offices to locate it.

Paying was interesting.  There’s a 300 RMB fee due upon collection.  This required using a smartphone at payment machines downstairs, which is beyond the abilities of my dumb phone.  My lovely wife managed to get it done, then had to display the receipt on her phone to one of the officers upstairs, who then took a photo of the receipt with his phone.  Some day they’ll get all these payment things fully integrated, or maybe just go back to having a window where one can pay cash and get a paper receipt.

I was very pleased that the officer who presented me with my green card was the same one who originally accepted my application.
As mentioned above, I was a bit surprised it wasn’t green.  Instead, it’s colored exactly like a Chinese ID.  If you hold it at just the right angle there’s a very vague hint of green on both a regular Chinese ID card and on the green card.

Yaaay! I finally got my Chinese Green Card!

No one present was 100% sure of how many green cards had been issued in Dongguan, but they believed there were only 7 or 8 others in the city who got a green card before me.

New Super Powers You Get with a Chinese Green Card

According to the back of my green card, I have some new superpowers.

This document serves as an identity card for the rightful holder residing in China and can be used independently of lawful proof of identity for matters relating to finance, education, health care, travel, accommodation, communication, employment, tax, social security, property registration, lawsuits and others.

I’ve tested a few of these.

A couple of months after getting the Chinese green card, I got to test it out for coming back into China. The immigration officer seemed a little surprised, but she was fully trained and processed me back in without any problem.

Two months later, my wife and I bought bus tickets to the Lowu/Lohu border with Hong Kong.  The ticket clerk didn’t even blink and just processed my ticket.  On the way out, the Chinese immigration officer suggested I get eChannel access.  On the way back into China, the immigration officer processed me without question and kindly directed us to where I could apply for eChannel access.  I already have eChannel for the Hong Kong side, so this makes life a lot easier (except for one time when some helpful person kept trying to direct me to away from the eChannel to the foreigner entry desks.

Getting the bus back from Shenzhen was a little harder.  The bus station at Lowu/Lohu there sells the tickets right by each bus using a portable ID reader.  My wife had to help the ticket clerk find the correct way to tell the reader to scan a permanent residency card.

I can buy train tickets or pick up pre-purchased train tickets from the same machines Chinese citizens use.  Goodbye standing in line at ticket windows  Hello standing in line in front of ticket machines.  The advantage is that ticket machines don’t have clerks, so no one can argue with them or ask them questions.  This makes the lines much faster.

I’ve successfully gone round trip by express train from Dongguan to Fenghuang in Hunan province without having to get my passport out even once.

As part of the “Others” category of superpowers, I’m told that I can now engage in martial arts while balanced on the slender tops of bamboo plants, just like in the movies.  This only works in bamboo forests and I’ll need to wave my green card around a little so the bamboo will know it’s required to cooperate.  I can’t wait to give this a try.

Things that should work, but don’t.

I had to update my ID at my bank (again) and decided to try to use my green card instead of my passport.  It’s supposed to work for Chinese banks the same as a Chinese ID.  There was even a slot for Permanent Residence ID on the form I had to fill out.  The clerk then said I had to use my passport, because their computer system wasn’t as advanced as the paper form I’d filled out.

At the Humen railway station, the automatic entry line for ID cardholders doesn’t understand what a green card is, so despite getting my ticket without needing a clerk, I still had to go through a separate line and show my ID to someone.  At least they seem ok with accepting a green card instead of a passport to let me into the train station.

Impossible is Just Another Word for Hard

I am so sick of people telling me things are impossible.

You can’t get a job teaching in China.  It’s impossible.  No, it’s not. I spent 8 months teaching English in China back in 2006-2007.  Just get the right paperwork.  If you need help, join RaoulsChinaSaloon.com and you’ll find people ready to answer your questions.  You can’t move to China permanently!  It’s impossible.  I moved to China with the intent to stay permanently in 2010.  Even without a green card, annual residence permits (which can now be longer than annual for some jobs) or long-term spouse visas are options to explore.  Again, asking for help instead of giving up because of a bunch of people too busy shouting Impossible! to try for themselves will improve your odds.

I lost count of the number of people who said everything they could think of to discourage me from even applying for a Chinese green card.  Most focused on it being “impossible“.  I’ve got a green card that says each and every one of them was wrong.  What it takes is determination, patience, lots of paperwork, controlled impatience, even more determination, more paperwork, plus a certain amount of Lunacy.

So, the next time someone says “Getting a Chinese green card is impossible.” or “Only rich people can get Chinese green cards.” or “China won’t issue a green card based on being married to a Chinese citizen.“, just point them to this page.  I got my green card.  I then dyed my hair green just for the party I threw.

If you get a Chinese green card, you need green hair. 🙂

My Chinese Green Card KTV Party

Useful References for Chinese Green Cards and Life in China:

Planning to teach in China, work in China, or just want to hear about living in China.  Drop by RaoulsChinaSaloon.com.  Parts of the article above were originally published at Raoul’s in this thread and this thread.  My deepest thanks to my fellow Saloon members for their feedback during the green card application process.

The Chinese government has an English language page properly sized for phone screens detailing all the ways to qualify for a green card here – http://appen.media.gov.cn/engovdata/html/greencard/

Want to invest in China, do business in China, visit China, study in China, work in China, or live in China?  There’s a great English language page the Chinese government has set up answering many of the questions relating to all of these questions here – http://english.www.gov.cn/services/live_in_china/2014/08/23/content_281474983007062.htm

Special thanks to Woot.com for permission to use their graphic.  If you want that on a shirt, you can get it here – https://shirt.woot.com/offers/not-easy-being-green This is a direct link. I’m not getting paid anything if you decide to buy one.