Starting a business in China

Ever thought about registering your own business in China? Think again. I just spent the last month (with help from my darling little sister in London) running round taking one document from one place to another, filling out forms, posting them off to random places, tearing my hair out and generally treading the eggshells down the narrow path of beaurocracy. No fewer than seven different multiply-signed and sealed documents are necessary and some of them need to go through four different organizations for certification before they even reach China. Ow. But I'm nearly there.


Finally (with one day to go before returning to China) I get the confirmation that the last translation has been finished and I only need to get a business address in China before the registration procedure can officially... begin!

To tell the truth, I'm nowhere near 100% sure that I have the right documents. After all, who knows what they should be? Let me give you an example. One document I need (according to the head of the trade and industry bureau of haikou city) is a "proof of existance of the foreign company", which must be provided by the chinese embassy in the revelant jurisdiction, in this case, Jersey. Anyone seeing any problems yet? Yes, all of you living in Jersey will have cried out by now, "But, Jersey has no chinese embassy". Or consulate. Or chamber of commerce or even citizens affair representative. Only a couple of chinese restaurants. And there lies the rub. Do the chinese embassy in London know what I should do? They don't even speak english, though after calling all public lines, not getting through on any of them, then finding their personnel list online, googling their names, obtaining the mobile of one of their really very much non-english speaking guy who I catch in Gatwick aiport returning from china and have to sweet-talk in Chinese to get the direct line to a Mr Zeng in the Trade and Commerce bureau, I manage to get from him that one document that **might** persuade them to issue a document which **might** be the one I need would be a 'Gong zheng'. Ok.... Turning to my handy online chinese legal dictionary, I discover that this is a Notiarization. Eh? What's that? (Law was never my strong point). Again, the internet (Wikipedia) comes to my rescue and I clue myself up on Notiarization, Legalization and Authentication. Acting on an impulse I start ringing people in the states administration randomly until I find someone who knows what they are talking about and that Legalization of Notiarizations (and other documents) are performed by the Lieutenant Governor, through the agency of Immigration (sooo logical)....
I'm stopping here to save you from an unplanned mid-afternoon nap. The point is that I don't think anyone, ever before in history has opened a division of a Jersey company in China. All uncharted waters.