Visa requirement: letter of invitation from Chinese Govt?

[mirgcire]

I just started the application for a visa for business travel to china. The company that usually arranges our visa says that as of April 15 there are new rules. They say I must get a letter of invititation from the chinese government, from the Department of Foreign and Comercial Affairs and it must be original (not a fax). However, they have no idea how to get this and suggested I contact people who work for my company in china.

Has anyone else encountered this? Does anyone know the procedure for getting a letter of invitation?

[monto]

Don't think there is a new rules actually, I am supposed to know if any. Still old rules but carried out more strictly.

Big organizations and even foreign trade companies are autherized by the Department of Foreign and Comercial Affairs to send official invitations. And the original is supposed to be used, but not so strict before, while recently they asks for the originals only (fax or scanned email works nomore).

As you plan a business travel to china, you can just ask the company you deal with for the official invitation.

[mirgcire]

Still old rules but carried out more strictly

Excellent! Thanks monto. In the past we have just used a letter faxed from our client in China. I will feed this back to our visa people.

[liuzhou]

There is a good article here on the changes to the visa regulations.

Of course, it's blocked in China so fire up your proxies or click here.

[xianu]

I am bringing students to CHina this summer and just as we were filling out/getting ready to send the documents, the visa service office informed me that I now needed to show proof of my hotel reservations in CHina, as well as my roundtrip ticket recept to prove I was leaving China. We also needed the letters of invitation, even for short-term study (under 6 months). Since I needed a multiple entry, I also needed to show the various business activities I was doing to justify why I needed to enter China 2 times. Aren't these actual changes rather than stronger reinforcement?