Beijing at a Glance

The Expat Job Market in Beijing

Beijing's central business district makes for an impressive cityscape.

Expats working in Beijing have become a rather common phenomenon over the past two decades. No wonder! Your chances of working in Beijing as an expat are excellent, as international companies are now flocking to China to tap this huge market. We tell you what to expect from working in Beijing!

Foreign Employees in China

A considerable number of expats working in Beijing are diplomatic staff and foreign correspondents employed by the many embassies and international press offices all over the city. Other expatriates were sent to the capital on traditional company assignments at their local branch. Both Chinese and international companies often have a representative working in Beijing, no matter where else in China their HQ or production plants may be, to stay in close contact with government bureaucracy in the capital.

However, foreign assignments are now receiving competition from so-called “flexpats”. Foreign employees are often hired without the traditional perks to local conditions, signing their contract directly with a Chinese company. If you are not likely to be sent on an expatriate assignment any time soon, but are still keen on working in Beijing, here are a few tips to help you with job hunting.

Employment Prospects

Being granted a visa plus work permit for China (so-called Z visa, from the Chinese word zhíyuán for 'employee') is subject to having an official invitation to the country. For the visa, you need either an employment license from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Labor and Social Security or official status as a foreign expert as granted by the State Administration of Foreign Expert Affairs (SAFEA).

This, in turn, is dependent on having a job offer from a China-based company that is officially permitted to employ foreigners – a multi-national branch office, a foreign-invested enterprise, or even a local Chinese company. The latter is rather unlikely, though, unless you are fluent in Mandarin.

Due to the booming fields of the Beijing economy as described above, hard skills and professional experience in engineering, pharmaceutics, IT and telecommunications, R&D, intellectual property law, international patent affairs, and finance will make you an interesting candidate for the Beijing job market.

Whether you actually need to speak Mandarin at work or whether English will do depends on the individual company and the specific job description. Since an ever increasing number of extremely well-qualified Chinese university graduates are also fluent in English, a basic, or better yet, solid knowledge of business Mandarin can only improve your chances.

Getting a Job

Jobs in Beijing are advertised on such commercial websites as ChinaHR, the Chinese version of Monster, or Danwei Jobs, a media website focusing on employment in China’s creative industries. Moreover, you should also check the China website of your Chamber of Industry and Commerce. Quite a few of those homepages include job markets that are specifically tailored to foreigners of a certain nationality interested in working in China.

Last but not least, you should prepare to apply a long-term strategic approach to job hunting in Beijing. Guānxì (i.e. contacts, connections, relations) are an important part of doing business in China, and you should thus try to build yourself a network of people in the Beijing area who might help you find a suitable job. Online communities, a fact-finding trip to China, a business visit, a language holiday, etc. might be good ways of starting such a personal network.