For foreign companies, the least expensive and most common way to establish a permanent presence in China is to register as a representative office. Representative office in China can perform consulting, liaison, market research and co-ordination type of work. However, you need to consider one question: do you need to invoice locally? The reason is as a representative office, the entity is not allowed to sign contract and collect money and thus not allowed to invoice locally neither. If your clients in China could accept you invoicing them directly from the mother company in foreign currency, then register a representative office would be your first choice as it's the most easy and inexpensive model. If you do need to invoice locally in RMB (Chinese currency), then you could consider registering a Joint Venture or a WFOE (Wholly Foreign-owned Enterprise).

Steps to set up a Representative Office:

1. Documents for the establishment of foreign representative offices

• Application letter to be signed by the president or the general manager of the head office with their printed names
• Certificate of incorporation (A Hong Kong company should also provide its business registration certificate)
• An original bank letter to be issued by the bank of the head office
• Appointment letter to be signed by the president or the general manager of the company to appoint the chief representative of Beijing office (original)
• Resume of the chief representative or the representatives
• Copy of ID card or passport of the chief representative or the representatives
• 5 2-inch photos
• Copy of the office lease contract
• Ownership certificate with the seal of the owner (or copy of office purchase contract, copy of purchase receipts and the sales permit of the developer with his seal on it if there is no ownership certificate)

Please Note:
1. documents from a Japanese company should be sealed its seals
2. Two introductory letters are needed if the chief representative or the representatives are local Chinese
3. The documents have to be translated into Chinese if they are in foreign languages

2. Application procedure

Above-consolidated documents will then be submitted to different government authorities for registration, including local industrial and commercial bureau, the tax bureau, customs, opening bank etc. Sino-Link Consulting provides you a one-station full service. You don't need to come to China and go through the bureaucracy, as we will finalize all above procedures for you to your satisfaction.