Offshore Account

[slattery]

Does anyone know how to open up a Chinese bank account, while living in the U.S.?

My wife is a Chinese citizen, but we live in the U.S. It would be great to be able to open a bank account in China, transfer money easily, and even manage the account over the Internet. I haven't had any luck finding this sort of thing, yet. And none of our Chinese friends in the US have a Chinese bank account, which seems strange!

Thanks for any tips or advice!

[roddy]

I think the usual course of action would be to get a friend or relative to open it up in their name, and then you use it. Obviously that would need to be someone you trust. Beyond that, I don't know of any way you could open a standard Chinese bank account without being present - although I guess if you can send you wife's ID card over it could be done in her name.

What do you actually want to use it for?

[peekay]

"Easily" transferring money between Chinese RMB & non-Chinese accounts is not really feasible, because the renminbi is not a "fully convertible" currency and therefore not directly exchangeable in international markets. Beijing has put in place a ton of "capital flight" regulations which further complicate things.

To facilitate personal business in southern China, there is a special arrangement which lets one transfer money between special accounts setup in Hong Kong and Guangdong Province (only). So you could conceivably setup multiple accounts in the US <==> HK <==> Guangdong <==> Final Mainland location (if not Guangdong) and transfer between them. Even then, there are strict limits on how much RMB you can exchange out (few thousand USD per day if I think.) Not really practical.

Another possibility is to setup an account in mainland China but in a foreign currency (e.g., in USD or Euro) but probably not worth doing... just keep your money in the States or in a true offshore tax-free jurisdiction (Cayman Island, etc.)

If you only want to transfer *into* China ever and not "easily" transfer money back out then of course any Chinese or foreign bank in China would happily take your wire transfer at any time.

[trevelyan]

It depends on why you need the account.

HSBC in Hong Kong is great. And they have really top-notch Internet banking services.