Z visa feasible in my situation?

[Powers of Ten]

I have a bit of a unique situation and I'm unsure whether I could expect to obtain a Z visa.

I'm a U.S. citizen, my wife has Taiwanese and U.S. citizenship. Her family owns a company (based in Taiwan) that does manufacturing in China. Both of us would like to work for said company, but I don't know how realistic that would be for me.

I have a bachelor's degree in business, but my work experience is totally unrelated to the work I'd be doing in China. How would that play out when I try to get a foreign expert certificate? Could I get away with embellishing my experience?

Also, if this happens we would be located in Guangzhou. Would it make more sense to just live with doing monthly visa runs to Hong Kong? I actually have a current tourist visa that's valid until October since we made a trip to China recently, so I'm considering this option because it might allow us to go sooner.

[liuzhou]

I don't think your situation is so unique.

Whether or not you can get a Z-visa / Foreign Expert's Certificate is more dependent on the employer than on you. Do they hold the correct licences to employ foreigners etc?

As to your experience not being strictly relevant, I'd be astonished if the question ever arose. As long as you have a degree, the subject area is not usually important.

The visa run suggestion is not, I would say, recommended. Apart from the hassle, you would be working illegally.

[Powers of Ten]

Thanks for your reply. In between your post and my original post we actually inquired about the very question you asked. It turns out that they were unaware of such a license requirement as they had never considered hiring a foreigner before.

That said, your comment about the experience requirement makes me feel that this might still be worth pursuing.

I've looked into the license issue a bit and it seems that it's mostly based on a company's registered capital, but I need to do more research.

[panda23]

As to your experience not being strictly relevant, I'd be astonished if the question ever arose. As long as you have a degree, the subject area is not usually important.

This could actually be an issue. For the last university teaching job I applied for, I was told that foreign experts certificates (and thus work visas) could only be issued to those with 2+ years of related experience (for TEFL jobs this would of course be teaching), and this was not in a first tier city.

[scoopneals]

I don't know how to use quotes, but I've run in the problem that panda23 just talked about as well. Recently in looking for positions for next year. I've discovered after digging deeper, however, that those are usually COMPANY or UNIVERSITY stipulations rather than governmental situations. I'm just now wrapping up my first year of work out of college, teaching English at University in Shaanxi... needless to say, beforehand, I had never taught anything about English in my life.