China Student Visa Tips

Yes, you’re going to China! But now you need a China student visa. Unfortunately, as far as visas are concerned, China has a procedure that makes the entire process bureaucratic. For an application, you must meet various conditions and submit different forms and documents. You need to reduce stress and save time during the China student visa application. This article will come in handy during your visa application process.

Let’s start with the classification of China student Visa. If your study in China lasts for more than six months, you need a type of China student visa marked as X1 visa. An X2 visa is issued to international students for a stay period of fewer than six months.

What do you need to apply for a student visa for China?

The specific requirements for a visa application can change quite a bit depending on the country of origin, so check the Chinese EMbassy Website frequently or speak to your visa agency.

At China Scholar, we assist our applicants through the visa application process. From gathering the relevant documents to filling forms and preparing you for interviews.

In any case, you will need these documents:

• Proof of admission to a Chinese educational institution (Admission Notice);
• The Visa Application Form for Foreigners Wishing to Study in China (JW201 or JW202);
• The Physical Examination Record for Foreigners. This certificate is a mandatory medical examination for international students who will stay in China for more than half a year.
• Your passport valid for six months ( We recommend one year) and free two more pages for visas. Besides, you also need a copy of your passport’s information page.
• A completed privacy form.
• Add a passport photo that meets the requirements of the embassy.
• Booking confirmation of your flight to China, this must be a return flight. This confirmation is a requirement for short term applicants and students from the Netherlands and other countries.
• For X2 applicants, you need a Hotel confirmation for at least one night, and it is best to have the documents for the whole period. For example, an overview of Booking.com is enough for this, and you may even consider canceling this hotel again once you have saved or printed the outline.
• An overview of your itinerary with the places you’re going to visit. You need to include all the dates, accommodations, signature, and date. If you don’t like plans, this may sound scary, but no one will stop you from moving away from this proposed plan.

Depending on your situation, you also need the following documents:

• Are you married? Then you also need a copy of your partner’s passport.
• Do you have a job? Then submit a signed employer statement on stationery (or with stamp) of the company.
• Are you a student? Then you have to be able to prove this with proof of registration.
• Are you unemployed, retired, do you have your own company, or don’t have a job? Then you have to prove that you have sufficient financial resources.

How long in advance do you apply for your visa for China?

Your visa usually expires within three months. That means you have to travel to China before then. From then on, it will be valid for 30, 60, or 90 days (depending on your request). It is, therefore, not useful to apply for your visa more than three months in advance. The most ideal is somewhere between 3 months and one month before your trip. You may not need expedited service, as processing time is less than a week but, some visa services also offer emergency service.

When don’t you need a visa?

All international students arranging to study in China will need a visa. In certain cities, you may stay for a short period without a visa. You can apply for a transit visa exemption. In many cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, you can stay in China for 144 hours and in other cities for 72 hours. In all cases, you have to be able to show a ticket to a third country, and that may also be Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan. If you fly back from your own country, you are not transiting, and therefore you will not be eligible for such a transit visa.

What visa do you apply for when you visit friends or family?

With this intention, you are not a student, so you don’t need a student visa, rather a tourist or other classification of visas. If you visit friends or family in China, in some cases, you can also apply different types of visas. You may have to provide additional documents, such as an official invitation. For this reason, it is often easier to apply for a standard tourist visa. As you could read above, you should be able to show a hotel booking for this. In that case, you can book a hotel through sites such as Booking.com and cancel your visa after requesting your visa. That’s also true if you plan to stay in an Airbnb.

The information you pass on when applying for your visa shows that you plan to spend time in China as a student, but that doesn’t mean you can’t change your plans. Sleeping somewhere other than you indicated on your visa application is not a problem either!

When do you need to register at a police station in China?

NO matter the visa you hold, all visitors to China must register with a police station in the city where you stay within 24 hours. In most cases, you don’t have to do anything about this, because hotels and hostels do this for you. However, if you don’t stay in a hotel, for example, because you visit friends or family or sleep in an Airbnb, you’ll have to arrange that registration yourself. Sometimes you can do this at apartment complexes, but sometimes you have to visit a police station to fill out some forms. If you don’t, you’ll theoretically risk a fine, although in practice this hardly ever seems to occur.

Medical examination

International students who want to study in China for more than six months must present a copy of the Physical Examination Record for Foreigners, plus a blood test report. The complete file is only valid for six months from the date of testing. So first, consider your departure date before completing your physical examination form.

Chinese Weather and climate

China has different climate zones. We divide China to:

• Northern China (region: Shandong, Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Ningxia, Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang).

Northern China has both a country and desert climate with winter temperatures of an average of -15 to 5 degrees and an average of 20 to 30 degrees in summer.

• Southern China (region: Sichuan, Hubei, Henan, Anhui, Jiangsu, Shanghai Shi, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi, Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Hainan)

Southern China has both a sea and a tropical climate, with winter temperatures averaging 5 to 20 degrees and an average of 30 to 40 degrees in summer.

• Western China (region: Xinjiang, Gansu, Qinghai, and Tibet).

West China has a desert and a high-level climate with winter temperatures averaging 0 to -15 degrees and an average of 25 to 40 degrees in summer.

Best travel time

April, May, September, and October are the best months to travel to northern and central China. April and May are the best months to travel to eastern China. May, June and September are the best months to travel to southern China. This way, you will avoid the cold winter period and the months with the most rainfall.

Language

In China, several languages are spoken. The most spoken language is Mandarin Chinese, in addition to Cantonese; Wu and Hakka are spoken on a local scale. In China, there are several dialects.

Emergency

If you need the help of the police, fire brigade and ambulance in the event of an emergency, you can use the following emergency numbers:

• Police: 110
• Fire Brigade: 119
• Ambulance: 120
• Road accidents: 122

Dial these numbers only in case of an emergency. As a tourist or student in China, you should follow the Chinese laws and rules, and therefore should not make use of these emergency numbers in any inappropriate way.

If you have decided to study in China, I am sure you will not regret it. It will be an adventure of a lifetime. You may need assistance completing the admission process or someone watching over your shoulder to make sure you are doing the right thing. That’s China Scholar‘s specialty. We combine Study plans with career programs in China such that you get admission to a prestigious university in China, with an internship, campus assimilation, orientation, study support, and 100% access to our community. We wish you all the best!

The Chinese School Models

China has an entirely different school system compared to Western schools. However, Chinese education is becoming more internationalized and also adjusts to their school curriculums to fit. Many international students are interested in studying in China because of Chinese economic progress, technological breakthrough, and the opportunities it presents to young people. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the Chinese system a bit more before you come to China for your study. This article will tell you more about school systems in China in a very informative way.

History of Chinese Education

Since the 1950s, China has been providing mandatory education for nine years, accounting for a fifth of the world’s population. In 1999, primary education was widely available to 90% of China, and today the mandatory nine-year compulsory learning year covers 85% of the population. Although central and provincial governments provide some funding for education, funding varies between provinces, with rural areas significantly lower than in major cities. Families have to supplement government-provided funds to schools with government-provided education, meaning some children have far less money. However, parents attach great importance to education and make great personal sacrifices to enable their children to go to school. Illiteracy among young people and middle-aged people has dropped from 80 percent to 5 percent. The system has trained about 60 million senior professionals and nearly 400 million employees to reach the junior or senior secondary level. Today, 250 million Chinese have access to higher education (lower, secondary, and high), while growth rates in the rest of the world have doubled over the same period. The net enrolment rate in primary schools was 98.9%, and the gross enrolment rate in secondary schools was 94.1%.

China’s educational horizons are growing. In the 1980s, MBA (Master of Business Degrees) degrees were almost unknown, but in 2004 62 MBA schools had 47,000 MBAs. Many also apply for international professional qualifications, such as EMBA and MPA, and nearly 10,000 MPA students were enrolled in 47 institutions, including Beijing University and Tsinghua University. The education market is booming, with the training and testing of professional computers and foreign languages evolving. Continuing education is a trend.

International cooperation and educational exchanges are years after year. More students study abroad in China than in any other country. Since 1979, there have been 697,000 Chinese students in 103 countries and regions, 185,000 of them have returned to China after studying. The number of international students who are studying in China has also increased. In 2004, there were 110,000 students from 178 different countries in Chinese universities.

Investment in education has been increased in recent years. Since 1998, the total budget for education is increased by 1% every year. Under a plan of the Ministry of Education, the government will strengthen an education funding system that is consistent.

Chinese education is an indoctrination education. Students are informed of their predecessors’ experience, and they are taught to operate in accordance with their successful experiences. They can learn and practice under the guidance of experts. Similarly, they can also draw their conclusions. It is challenging to jump out of the existing fixed mode.

The Educational Characteristics of the Chinese School Model

First, there is a flood of exam-oriented education. Education from elementary school to university is based on the memory of relevant knowledge and the simple use of examinations as the core. It does not take into account the learning ability of students or the moral cultivation of students, let alone consider the students’ multi-faceted development and innovative capacity. Take exams before university, and cope after university. The higher you learn, the easier it is to progress, the higher the title, the easier it is to cope.

The second is the extensive decay of educational ideas. Education is based on students, but the reality is captive. The key to good or bad teaching is the teacher, but you can be a teacher, whether you understand education or not. Schooling was originally set to educate students on how to learn, but in reality, it turned into tactics and knowledge. Out of one hundred people, ninety-nine people think that education is class, the study is class, the class is about repeating the knowledge of books, and study is to do a bunch of questions. Teachers should explain what students do not understand immediately.

Third, education is entirely controlled by administrative power. All Chinese schools have a Supreme Leader on it, and its name is the Ministry of Education. China’s university presidents are appointed by the executive branch, so they know politics but not education. Look at a bunch of administrators and university presidents talking nonsense there about using the Chinese model to create a world-class university, and you know what level these people have in terms of education ignorance. The administrative power of the school is entirely above the educational and academic potential.

Fourth, education reform is promoted by the government. Educators do not solve problems with education but on the desks of government officials. The future of education is not conceived by those who understand education, but a group of politicians who have no idea what education science is.

Fifth, derailment of school education and family society. At present, school education in China is still a huge problem, because of the derailment of school education and family society. The purpose of school education is to cultivate students’ moral sentiment and increase their knowledge so that students in the future will have the ability to provide for themselves. But it is a pity that the education of many schools is wholly derailed from the family society. Students have only learned knowledge in schools, and they have not applied and practiced the study. The derailment of education and family society is mainly secondary schools. At present, most colleges and universities have begun to attach importance to the integration of school education and family society. For example, many universities have regularly carried out some social activities, so that the skills and knowledge learned by students can be applied in practice. At present, many middle schools do not do this but completely closed education mode. Such an education mode makes the knowledge learned by students lose the ability to practice in the family society.

Sixth, school education ignores the personality of students. One problem with school education in China at present is that it ignores the nature of students. Every child is the smartest. There is no stupid child in the world. In school, each child has its strengths and personality, and it is essential to value the character of each child to cultivate the child properly. Many bad children who are troubled by older students are not naughty but are wronged by way of teaching. Now, most of the schools began to attach importance to the proper education of each child and each student. Many students even started targeted training for the different characteristics of each different student. Such education can truly cultivate talents, and the school is universal. Education will cause the personality of many children and students to be ignored as a whole and no real abilities will be cultivated.

Seventh, school education is too rigid and inflexible. At present, the school education model in China is too rigid. Most schools’ education mode is students attending lectures, most of which are exams and homework. Many companies and units complain about graduates of recruited colleges and universities, saying that these college graduates do not have any ideological and innovative consciousness. Although their academic qualifications are not low. However, it is challenging to become precious talents in enterprises. This shows that most of the skills cultivated in Chinese school education are very rigid and cannot be flexibly adapted to reality.

Compared to Other Educational Systems

Very recently, the BBC released a documentary comparing the productivity of Chinese Education systems to British systems. The results were surprising; the Chinese students fared better than their Brtish counterparts. This drove several parents to seek Chinese education for their kids.

Conclusion

The problem is that the education method is rigid and inflexible, which leads to the inability of many students to apply knowledge in practice, let alone the innovation of ideas. This has changed drastically over the past decades giving way for innovative teaching and learning processes. Higher education institutions have research and development departments that make sure the curriculum is not rigid.

Some scholars still think a Learning from Western countries’ education systems is not rigid will help upgrade the system. It is flexible, and students can even debate with teachers at any time, Teachers also listen to students’ suggestions and ideas seriously. Sometimes, teachers also become students, and students also become teachers. This kind of education can really stimulate students’ innovative consciousness and thinking, while rigid classroom education can only cultivate.

Chinese Universities have also integrated international tutors into their teaching systems to diversify the teaching and learning environment.

If you are not sure what to do yet, check out our article on why you should study in China. We also have resources on the admission process. International students interested in getting degrees in China could search for courses, programs review Chinese Universities and also explore the scholarship opportunities available.

Feel free to connect with our admission advisors for support