opening a bank account.

[syu.edu]

hello,

i am going to study in china from september 05 till 07 and i would like to ask you if it is possible for a foreigner to open a bank account in china. if it is possible, is it cheap? i need to have a bank account because i will have to pay ~3000 Euros within the first week and i dont want to take so much money with me for obvious reasons. anyone can help me out?

[cutty]

Sure, you can open a bank account and there is no cost for that.

[syu.edu]

that is good news. thanks a lot. just got a new similiar question.

i can also open a citibank account in germany for free (cause i am a student) and i can use the "maestro" card world wide (in china). does someone know the fees for withdrawing money from chinese banks with an foreign card? i know that in germany there are fees for cases like this. maybe it is different in china - well i hope so.

[Junior]

You need to find out from YOUR bank whether or not there are any fees (Edit : ok thinking about this I am talking about ATM's). If I were you I would open a bank with a China bank (as you suggested). And keep your Geman one for occasional use. I pretty much did the same thing. My roommate had heaps of trouble using her foreign card over there but mine was ok most of the time (mine had the maestro symbol so yours should be ok too). But due to the withdrawal fees (from foreign bank) i used my chinese one more. There is a bank in the Uni that I used and also a Bank of China. One tip, I dont reccomend travellers cheques, they are more trouble than theyre worth. Very few banks know what to do with them. If you are worried you wont be able to withdraw money when you get there, get some RMB before you leave Germany.

[gougou]

If you are worried you wont be able to withdraw money when you get there, get some RMB before you leave Germany.

Keep this to a minimum, though; last time I checked, exchange rates where much worse in German banks than in China (EUR:RMB 1:11 in China, 1:9 in Germany)

[syu.edu]

as far as i know it is forbidden to get RMB outside of china anyway? thats what my local bankservice told me.

[gougou]

Hmm, not sure about that.

But you should be fine with the Maestro Card, I used one from the 'Sparkasse' and never had any problems (except after forgetting the pincode, but that's another story...)

[syu.edu]

sparkasse does not sound very russian. do you come from germany?

[nerveandmuscle]

Citibank has branches in China: Tianjin, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen.. If you are going to a city where there is a branch, ATM withdrawls should be free. I had a citibank card for that purpose but the exchange rate was a bit lower than what I was able to obtain via Bank of China non cash rate.

The Bank of China had two exchange rates: cash and non-cash. The cash rate is lower. I was able to get money from my US bank account into my Bank of China account by writing myself a check. It took 4 weeks for the check to clear but I got the higher non-cash rate (difference of a couple hundred yuan for the transaction) and the fee was only 20 yuan.

[allenedgar]

Besides Citibank, are there any other banks with branches in the U.S. and China?

[nerveandmuscle]

HSBC is the only other bank that I can think of off hand. I'm not sure how international atm's and accounts work with them though. You can look on their web page for the locations of their Chinese branches though their US branches are limited to the east and west coasts.

[大肚子]

Be warned though, just beacause a bank has brances in different countries does not mean you'll be able to access your account from them. Sometimes the different countries' systems aren't completely integrated. Be sure to check before you leave if you can access your money from the other country, and make sure it's from someone who should know what they are talking about. My friend has an HSBC account in the UK and was told he would be able to access it in Australia. When he arrived, however, he found it was actually incredibly difficult to access UK HSBC accounts from HSBC branches there. So don't take it for granted.

[laohu489]

Bank of America has a branch in Shanghai. It seems to me that in Shanghai there are more European banks than American ones though.