Business setup content can be valuable, but it must be careful. The goal is to help founders ask better questions before paying for services or making commitments. This is a planning guide, not legal or tax advice: use it to prepare, then put your specific case in front of qualified professionals and the official service windows.
Questions before incorporation
- Do you need a company, representative office, employer of record, partner structure, or another arrangement?
- What activity scope do you need?
- How will the structure affect your visa or work authorization?
- Who will handle accounting, tax filings, payroll, and banking?
- Who are your first customers, and do they need invoices your structure can actually issue?
- If the plan changes in a year, how hard is this structure to change or close?
Write your answers down in plain language before you talk to any provider. Most bad setups start as a vague idea sold a fixed package.
Official Beijing entry points
Use the official Beijing investment portal as your first map before comparing service providers:
Beijing’s official materials for business users now include Chinese-English registration forms, a bilingual service guide, and foreign investor service counters. The resources page links the official updates, including the bilingual business registration forms. If your project is larger or district-specific, the portal’s coverage of Beijing CBD, foreign-invested enterprises, and regional headquarters is worth reading before you choose an address. For the registration steps themselves, see Registering a foreign-funded enterprise in Beijing.
Money questions to settle early
Banking
Ask which bank accounts the business needs, what documents the bank will want, and who must appear in person. Banks vary in what they ask for, and account opening often needs the legal representative present with company documents and identification. Do not plan launch dates around an account you have not opened yet.
Accounting and tax
Every operating company needs bookkeeping and recurring filings, whether or not it is making money yet. Ask a prospective accountant what they file, how often, what it costs monthly, and what happens if you miss a deadline. Tax treatment varies with your activity, scale, and structure, so get advice for your case instead of copying another founder’s setup.
Your own pay and paperwork
Decide early how you will be paid, what contract sits behind it, and how social insurance applies once you employ yourself or others. The social insurance and housing fund guide maps the official sources for foreign workers in Beijing.
Visa and work authorization questions
Your business structure and your personal right to work in China are connected but separate. Ask, in writing:
- Does this structure support the work authorization you need, and who sponsors it?
- What happens to your residence status if the business pauses or closes?
- Which family arrangements depend on your permit, and what are their timelines?
- If you are currently employed elsewhere in China, what has to end or transfer before the new setup starts?
Line these answers up against the Beijing work visa basics guide and confirm details with the immigration service hotline listed on the resources page.
Hiring questions
Hiring your first employee adds contracts, payroll, and social insurance duties from day one. Before you hire, know who prepares contracts, who runs payroll, what records you must keep, and what the full monthly cost of an employee is beyond salary. If you only need short-term help, compare that honestly with contracting or an employer-of-record arrangement instead of defaulting to a hire.
A realistic timeline mindset
Founders usually underestimate three things: document preparation (including notarization and legalization of foreign documents — Beijing publishes a list of 24 institutions for one-stop foreign-related support, linked from the first-month guide), bank account opening, and the gap between “registered” and “able to invoice and get paid.” Build your plan in stages — structure decision, document preparation, registration, banking and tax setup, first contract — and put a range, not a single date, on each stage. If a provider promises the whole chain in one fixed number of days, ask which stage they are skipping.
First questions checklist
Before you pay for setup services, you should be able to answer:
- What exactly will the business sell, to whom, in its first six months?
- Which structure fits that activity, and what did you reject, and why?
- Who is legal representative, and do they understand the role?
- Where will the company be registered, and can that address be used for registration?
- Who handles accounting, tax filings, payroll, and banking — named people, not “the agency”?
- How does your own work authorization work inside this structure?
- What does the first year cost in total: setup, address, accounting, and filings?
If you can answer those seven, you are ready to compare providers on equal terms — and to use the official portals above to check what they tell you.