New visa with help of friend's company?

[phyrex]

Everyone, I need your help,

I am currently in Beijing on a 3 month tourist visa that will expire in 2-3 weeks.

I ultimately want to stay in China for about a year.. but how to do that?

Visa runs are expensive, and so is enrolling in some school, and so is converting my visa to a 6 month (or more) F one through an agency. (I have been quoted ~3700 RMB for that process)

However, a friend of mine has a small company, though not in Beijing but in Inner Mongolia. Does anyone know if it would be possible for him to give me an "internship" for 6-12 months which would get me an according visa? How would we go about that?

Has anybody any experience with something like that? Or recommendations what else I could do?

Thanks a lot!!

[imron]

Marry a local? Although judging by some other threads, that could also be an expensive option

Seriously though, I don't think there's going to be a nice cheap and hassle free option.

[phyrex]

Haha, that's one of my longterm plans, though definitely one that would profit from me staying around here longer ;)

I just wondered if anybody ever went that route ('internship' in a friend's company) and knows what we both would need to in order to make that work...

[imron]

Is your friend's company a Chinese company or a wholly-owned foreign enterprise?

If the former, it will probably cost more for them to get permission to hire foreigners and go through all the paperwork to apply than it is to just lay down the RMB 3700

[phyrex]

Just a small Chinese company. Thanks a bunch, imron, I guess that answers my question.

[trevelyan]

The Hong Kong visa run can be inexpensive if you know what you're doing (1600 for the train both ways, plus whatever you spend in Hong Kong while you're there). The problem is that you can easily end up getting only a short term visa and needing to convert it to something longer back in Beijing.

Small case in point, if you want to get an F visa down there (for business on behalf of a company not registered in China) you generally need a business card linking you to the applying organization. No business card, no luck.