Now that you found an internship and book your plane ticket, everything seems to be ready except one thing: the VISA!

This step is often the more stressful step in order to finally go to China. The first question you might ask to yourself is: Which visa should I get in order to do my internship in China? You have different kind of visa and we’ll review them one by one.

The student visa/ Visa X1 or X2 : If you’re coming to do an internship, even if you still a student, you should not use this visa, as it’s a visa suitable in order to study in Chinese universities and not internship. And if you want to get this kind of visa, agencies might ask you to pay a school to get this kind of visa even if you’ll obviously not go there, which makes things more expensive for you.

The working visa/ Visa Z: You’re not coming to work, moreover if you don’t have any professional experience you won’t be able to get such a visa. The consulate criteria in order to get this visa is to have at least 2 years of work experience before, and sometimes they want that experience in the sector of the company you’ll be doing your internship at. You can’t be too young or still a student to get this Visa. Only suitable applicants that can stay for a long period of time can apply for work visa but only in rare cases and the process takes a lot of time.

Tourist visa/ Visa L:As it’s written, it’s a tourist visa, which means it’s for short term. You can use this visa for a short term internship or in the case they don’t provide in your country the business visa. Once you arrive in China, it will be possible to change it for the appropriate visa if you’re staying for a long term internship.

Business visa/ Visa M: This is what might suit the most in order to come in china. If you have a 3 to 6 months’ internship, you’ll need one to two entries visa. Which means that up to a certain point you’ll have to leave the country and comeback especially if you do your internship in Shanghai or Beijing. In the case of Chengdu note that it’s possible to extend your visa without leaving the country and it’s not expensive, in this case you better take one entry visa and then extend it.

To makes things easier you can contact agencies! First reason to do so, is that you might be leaving far from the closest Chinese ambassy, and they check everything for you before sending it to the ambassy, which makes you earn time. But remember that it will cost you more to go through this kind of things.  If you go through an agency, please read carefully all their terms and conditions, some of them sometimes won’t be that careful and might just send your documents without even checking and tell you that your visa have been refused and that you have to pay again to apply. Some Visa agencies have better relations with the embassies but others might ask you even more papers. So you better call different agencies and check everything and make your choice after then. If you have any doubt before applying for Visa feel free to contact us.

To get your visa if you pay the basic fee it will take a week to get it, but if it’s urgent you can get it in 2 days but you’ll have to pay more.

You can see more on this website about the visa. And SII will assist you as well through your application to get an internship in China.

https://www.visaforchina.org/