Now that we’ve successfully left China (with our reputations and government standing intact, we hope!), we wanted to quickly lay out the process for others facing the same upcoming challenge. Just like when we were obtaining visas and moving within China, we found online resources sorely lacking on this topic, so hopefully this helps you ask the right questions of the right people and plan for a smooth exit.
If you want to look back at our wild adventures in obtaining our visa, check out our three part series (because it was so difficult it required three posts, plus making an internal China move!): Part 1, Part Deux, Part 3, Shenzhen to Shanghai.
Once you know for sure that you’re leaving China, you should estimate 4-8 weeks lead time before your actual, physical departure. This will allow 3 weeks to finish the tasks below, as well as plenty of time to throw yourself a party or two, sell furniture online and close-out life in the Middle Kingdom.
Of course, we discovered all of this at the last minute, and mostly from other expats who went through the same situation. Even my HR team and our moving company kept on changing their minds on what documents they needed, when they needed them, and how long they would be holding them. Even leaving China, there is visa confusion.
Surprise, surprise.
The single major task that must be completed before leaving China is cancelling your resident and/or work permit. To cancel your resident permit, you can hire a middle man (remember our guy Ben from Shenzhen?) to help gather the paperwork and submit to the Exit-Entry Administration office for processing. In our case, my workplace handled the arrangements.
On an agreed upon day, we submitted our two passports (which contain the full-page resident permits), multiple photos of each of us, and our temporary police registration documents that we acquired last year when we moved into our neighborhood. These documents need 8 business days to process, and you can get your passports back the morning of the 8th business day. The passports will be returned with a 30-day visa, during which time you need to leave the country.
Your work permit will be cancelled by your employer and they will need your work permit card to complete the online forms. In our experience the date of doing the online form is pretty flexible, so I turned in my work permit the day before leaving the country.
Depending on how much stuff you’re moving out of China, you may be working with a moving company. The moving company will need to complete customs forms on your behalf and this requires them collecting your passport and active work permit for several business days. Typically, these forms are collected the day your items are removed from your home.
If you’re keeping track, you will be without your passport a total of around 11 business days, start to finish. Given all this, you can complete your exit from China on one of two basic timetables.
Option 1: Residence Permit First (what we did!)
- 13 business days before leaving: turn in residence permit cancellation paperwork
- 5 business days before leaving: receive passports back with 30-day visas
- 4 business days before leaving: movers come to pick up your things, take your passport/active work permit for customs processing
- 1 business day before leaving: receive passport and work permit back from movers
- 1 business day before leaving: return work permit back to workplace
- Leave China
Option 2: Move out of house first
- 13 business days before leaving: movers come, take your passport/work permit for customs processing
- 13 business days before leaving: move into temporary housing
- 10 business days before leaving: receive passport/work permit back from moving company
- 9 business days before leaving: turn in paperwork for residence permit cancellation
- (timing flexible) turn in work permit for cancellation
- 1 business day before leaving: receive passports back with 30-day visas
- Leave China
Both of these processes work, but if you choose Option 2, please note that if you are moving into a hotel or serviced apartment, you need your passport to check in. Therefore, check-in prior to the moving company taking your passport for customs clearance. Also, in China, you can get a temporary document for inter-China travel while your passport is with the Exit-Entry Administration, and that will work to check-in to a hotel, too!
In addition to these must-complete steps, there are several other steps that you can take as you close out life in China.
Frankly, there is a laundry list of things to close/cancel/gather prior to hopping on your exit flight. You can close your bank account (only at the branch where you opened it), cancel your mobile phone plan and cancel/turn-off auto pay on any other utilities and services.
Apparently you should unregister at your local consulate as well. Since we had no idea we had to register with our local consulate, I doubt they will miss us. Sorry US consulate…we’ll remember next time. Probably.
We unhooked our AliPay account from our utilities (which were set to auto-pay) but left our bank account open as I was expecting one last paycheck and we planned to still use the account abroad, slowly draining it over time. People have different views about severing all ties to China, but closing our bank account wasn’t an option. Since we opened it in Shenzhen, an account cancellation would have required a flight to Shenzhen and a visit to the branch we opened the account over 2.5 years ago. And let’s be honest, that side-trip wasn’t in the cards.
There is one last task you can undertake, which is to get a criminal background check completed prior to leaving the country. This check is something that you may need in the future (if you apply for permanent residency in another country you are often asked for criminal background checks in the places you’ve previously lived). These checks are much easier to obtain while still in China, but require a couple extra weeks of pre-work, turning in passports, etc. In the end, we didn’t get the checks done, knowing that if we are really forced in the future, we can pay a third party to help out (for a hefty fee). It’s worth noting anyway, and assessing if your situation may make this valuable or not.
After a month of distance from our China exit, I’d say it went smoothly overall. We almost didn’t budget enough time for all the passport handovers, but it worked out in the end. It really helped that the country we were moving to (Singapore) didn’t require us to submit our passports ahead of time, and was basically a breeze to enter.
The soul-sucking drama of Chinese visas is real, and part of me wants to burn all those documents for some kind of cosmic relief. But I won’t, just in case I need one of those pesky background checks in the future, and because that pile of paperwork is one of the hardest earned I’ve ever had.
