Following received from a reliable source:
quote
Please be informed that there have been further changes to the visa issuance regulations at the P.R. China Visa Office in Hong Kong. The validity of a visa for travel to Beijing, Shenzhen and Zhuhai will be temporarily reduced to less than one month, subject to the discretion of individual China Visa Officers. This temporary policy would probably be in effect until the closing of the Beijing Olympic Games. There are no change to existing visa validity periods for China destinations / cities other than Beijing, Shenzhen and Zhuhai.
unquote
At least some NEWS - but it sounds like bad "china visa news" !
9 comments:
Why Shenzhen and Zhuhai? These are not the hosting cities for the Games. Visaman, do you know why it's not some cities like Shanhai, Tianjin, and Qingdao?
Yes why Shenzhen & Zhuhai ? Maybe to show how much this has to do with the Olympics and most probably to "hurt" the many laowei's doing business in HK and need to go frequently SZ + Zhuhai (also many Japanese companies in Zhuhai area).
Simply to switch one gear higher in the game called: "Showing the long nose to the bad bad foreigners, who always report so bad about China"
Cannot find out until now why Shenzhen & Zhuhai. There are direct ferry connections from HK International Airport to both places - maybe this is one reason.
Surely Shenzhen is "high frequency border" for all kind of nationalities, so they will see a huge decrease in "border traffic" there within the next weeks.
All in all the situation is very frustrating and it seems almost nothing (besides filing a complain) has been done by our HK SAR Government !
The situation is more than frustrating - it is very bad and really starts damaging our business. We are a small italian office here serving high fashion customers - we already neeeded to cancel most of our new developments because for this we have to go ourselves to the factory - this the local staff can simply not handle alone. Sorry but this is truth - and we do not know anymore how to explain to our customer ...they think we are nuts .......Thanks Mr China Man for this very intelligent VISA rules !!!!!
Hey Visa Man - quick update on Visa experiences in Shanghai and US. I was recently able to successfully use the 'special invitation letter' and get a multiple entry visa issued back in the U.S. However a couple of important notes...
- The letter was not easy to get in the first place, required 'hosting' Chinese company to provide their official chopped business license and everything (as you know - a precious document that they do not like to let out into public).
- They would only write the letter for a 6 mo. Multiple Entry visa, so I am good through November, although of course I really wanted 1 year like the 'old days'...
- HOWEVER, now we have been told that Shanghai will not write the letter even for 6mo M.E.! They say MAYBE you can get a double-entry invitation letter, but no better.
- Not only are they strict about 'visa must be applied-for & issued in home country only' but in the U.S. they have suddenly become very strict about consulate jurisdiction. In the past I was supposed to go to New York for visas (I live in Boston when not in Asia), but in reality could get from Washington DC or San Francisco (or Hong Kong of course!) Now every U.S. resident MUST ONLY go to the consulate with jurisdiction for their place of residence. And some consulates have tougher rules than other (New York requires extra letters from U.S. employer that DC would not require). I assume other larger countries with multiple consulates may have the same rules.
Like everyone else, I really hope by November things are back to normal!
Thanks for keeping the visa-news-page...
Hi JC - thanks for that info. But for us in HK here is different somewhat. Anyhow I am curious: For this 6 month multiple Visa - how many travel schedules / hotel bookings you came up with ? JUst for the first journey ? Or a schedule covering the whole 6 months (is almost impossible....in my opinion ..)
Visa Man -
Great question(s). Two or three or four answers for you...
I know things are different in Hong Kong but since I know a lot of foreigners are reading your blog and trying to figure out what their options are, I figured the info might still be helpful... I almost ALWAYS got my Visas more recently in Hong Kong until this mess came up, obviously the trip back to North America is a nightmare...
First and overall we took somewhat of the 'ass-ki$$ing' approach: provide above and beyond documentation for everything to appear that we are more than happy to comply with everything and demonstrate our committment to supporting 'social harmony' ;^) .
To get the 'invitation letter' from Shanghai govt I provided about 18 months of history proving that I usually need to pop in and out of China several times a month.
For the M.E. visa application itself, first we 'estimated' [some would say 'made-up' but it was as good a guess as any...] entry/exit dates for the next 6 months on the basis of expecting an entry every 3 weeks or so. Of course we didn't have actual airline itineraries for all that...
Naturally we DID book airline and hotel reservations for the first entry as required, despite the fact that we knew plans would change as they always do. To wit, by the time I got the visa I already had to change my first entry flight to Beijing to make a meeting there before continuing on to Shanghai. In fact my 'real' airline reservation was a one-way entry, since we knew I'd be leaving to Vietnam but didn't know the date yet, but for the application since they insist on a round-trip, well... we booked a 'round trip' refundable and provided that information. Likewise regarding hotel... well my client keeps an apartment for me in Shanghai, but it's much simpler to just get hotel letters of reservation than to submit my local police certificate and explain "I use an apartment, but NO I'm not a resident and I register with the police..." Long story short - my advice to others is "ALWAYS just book matching refundable airline and hotel for the application, regardless of what your actual plans end up being."
As an aside, in this modern age, the idea of 'paper documentation of hotel/airline reservations' is a complete joke obviously since people can make up all kinds of documentation and can book refundable reservations like crazy, but if that's what they need, we'll make the reservations and send the copies...
Lastly, in the same letter, we also included the same 'historical' entry information for past 18 months as we gave Shanghai govt - this as you know isn't required but we hoped it would help prove the case. And of course we also included all the usual 'company guarantees of providing support' language etc.
Hope any of this is useful... Even though it's been a nightmare (I haven't mentioned all the hours and hours wasted applying and waiting in person in Pudong where we were promised a Visa only to be flat turned away at the last second by the official when we finally got our chance at the 'interview' counter with no chance to plead a case.
And even then I have to say I feel lucky I'm not caught in the HK border crossing and visa-cancelling hassles... sounds like a nightmare!
Thanks JC for that detailed answer. That clearly shows if you apply "outside" with enough documentation the chance for the time being to get a multiple entry visa issued is much better than we try here in HK. But I got already some infos from several provinces about this visa notification letter - some of them are saying:" We do not know this document, we are not able to issue this paper for the time being because of adminstration changes..........". You see - its that easy.........
Visa Man -
I am not surprised at all about your experience with other provinces/cities. If SHANGHAI (which is as you know one of the most business/international friendly) is now saying 'can't issue M.E. letter due to changes', then I'm sure it's almost impossible for many other places.
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