The step-by-step plan for China

In this step you see which papers you need to work in China. There are three, and you get them in a fixed order:

• First your employer applies online for the work permit notification. That's the advance permission to work in China.
• With that notification you collect the Z visa, the work visa, in The Hague.
• After landing you complete it with the work permit itself and the residence permit. Each of those has a deadline of its own.

Without an employer the application doesn't exist. Moving first and looking for a job afterwards is therefore not a route here.

Clear up one misunderstanding right away. Dutch citizens currently travel to China visa-free for thirty days, for holidays and business visits. Working on that is expressly not allowed, not for a day.

With this step you find out whether you qualify for a work permit. China divides foreign workers into three classes. Unlike in Canada or Australia, this is a threshold, not a contest: there's no pool, no ranking and no invitation round. So you don't compete with other candidates.

Class B is the standard, and the bar is lower than people think. You get in one of these ways:

• You have a bachelor's plus two years' relevant work experience.
• Or you score sixty points on the points table. Salary, education and age weigh heaviest there. For age, 26-45 scores highest.

Class A is for those who score 85 points, or earn six times the local average wage. That class gives accelerated processing, no age limit and a permit of up to five years.

Speaking Chinese is not a requirement. It counts for at most five bonus points.

Count your points honestly. If you stay under sixty and don't have a bachelor's plus two years' experience, you know it now.

In this step you see what the move will cost you, even before the job offer is there.

The Chinese government isn't the cost item. The work permit is free and the visa costs a good hundred euros per person.

The money is in the landing, the first period after arrival:

• Deposit and agency fee, the fee for the estate agent.
• A home in the expat districts of Shanghai or Beijing, where many foreigners live.
• A buffer to live on until the first salary.

If children are coming along, one item overshadows everything: the international school. It runs into tens of thousands of euros per child per year.

The calculator lines it up for your situation.

This step is about two things the recruitment stories skip. They shape your daily life in China.

The language. English opens the door at international employers. But the district office, the hospital, the rental contract and almost every app speak Chinese. The good news: unlike the script suggests, spoken Mandarin is quite learnable. Start today.

The internet. Google, WhatsApp, Instagram and most Dutch news sites are blocked in China. Contact with home shifts in practice to WeChat, the Chinese app for messaging and paying. You'll reach your parents in the Netherlands through WeChat too. For work, employers arrange licensed international lines: permitted connections to the internet outside China.

This isn't a footnote but a daily reality. Get an honest taste of it this week.

With this step you decide together whether it will be China. Some things only start to weigh later. Discuss them together now, before you decide.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you leave behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Agree on three evenings, a week apart:

• Evening 1, why. What do we hope to find in China? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What has to be in place for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to go back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4.

On those evenings, take these points along too:

• Your partner's career. On an S1 family visa your partner may not work. That takes a work permit of their own, with the same threshold as yours. Two careers therefore means clearing class B twice.
• The AOW trap. A single person gets the married rate of the AOW (the Dutch state pension) here, the lower amount for married people, for as long as you live here. The full story is in phase 3, but it belongs in this conversation.
• The country itself. You're building a life in a state with a filtered internet and a different legal order. Permanent residence is out of reach for almost everyone.

For many people it's the experience of their life. But say the trade-off out loud.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers for the visa, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Whoever lives in China and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually no longer builds up AOW. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. You can insure yourself voluntarily with the SVB. You have one year for that, counted from the moment you're no longer insured. Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on large expenses.

Married, registered or living together? That can make a difference for your partner's residence permit, for co-insurance in healthcare and for inheritance. In China it makes all the difference. The legal family circle, the people who may come along on a family visa, knows only spouses, children under 18 and parents (in-law). For unmarried partners there's no route. Check at the visa further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four. Tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed routines, such as the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school. Tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, such as their room.
• Teenagers. Involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs the most. Agree how they keep in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

In China you choose between an international school, an international division of a Chinese school, or an ordinary Chinese school. What that means per age is in the article about school with this step.

Who learns the language, and when? English opens the door at international employers. But the local government office, the hospital and nearly every app speak Chinese. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and that's exactly the one without colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave. The step about the language and the internet, earlier in your plan, says how to start.

Choose below the date on which you want to be in China. The step-by-step plan works out whether that's feasible with what still has to happen. That's clearer here than you'd think. The job search is the big unknown, but the chain after it is counted in weeks, not months. A target date is yours: you can always move it, and moving it is a perfectly fine outcome.