European Chamber Tianjin Chapter Met with DG Luan of Foreign Affairs Office of Tianjin Municipal People's Government on Foreign Nationals Travelling to China

2022-06-10 | Tianjin

The European Chamber Tianjin Chapter had a meeting with Foreign Affairs Office of Tianjin Municipal People's  Government (TJFAO) on foreign nationals travelling to China on Friday, June 10th 2022. DG Luan Jianzhang led the TJFAO delegation including DDG Zhao Jianling, Chiefs of Division of Foreign Administration, Europe and African and Coordination. Dr. Christoph Schrempp,  Chairman of the Chamber Tianjin Chapter led the Chamber delegation of 10 companies participating the meeting.

Chairmen Schrempp welcomed the FAO delegation and showed appreciation that to paid a visit to the EUCCC Tianjin Chapter and had a meeting together with the Chamber members on the hot topic of foreign nationals travelling to China. He raised that European business in Tianjin suffers since the beginning of 2022. In this context of COVID, foreign experts are backbone to maintain actual operations and crucial to implement new investments and processes. However, the reality had been that foreign experts wanted to leave China and Tianjin after the experiences in the end of 2021 and 2022. Additionally, Chairman Schrempp shared about the reasons why did the short-term business travel so important. The companies participated shared their real cases and experiences on applying PU letter for their foreign experts and employees in 2021 and the first half of 2022. Generally speaking, that was not easy, the average process was over 20 working days, which were around 15-16 days  longer than the process officially announced by TJFAO.

DG Luan was much appreciated that the Chamber provided the real cases of the PU letter policy implementation. The reason sharing on how short-term travelling impact the actual business operation and new investments were very helpful, actually  the impacts were much bigger than what they understand. So they would report this to MOF and support to accelerate the process locally. Additionally, DG Luan announced at the meeting PU letters would be no needed for foreign nationals employed by companies operating in TJ since Monday, June 13th, the new policy also to be applied for their family members. Although the new policy would only been taken in effect 3 days after, but they would like to share it firstly with the EUCCC as a gift.