Can I register a company in China without visiting?

The question has two halves. Registering the company is a filing, and an agent can make a filing. Making the company usable means a bank and a tax bureau each identifying a named person, the legal representative. That second half is where the travel question is decided, and it is decided by the city, the bank and the branch, not by a single national rule.

Step by step: what can be done from abroad

Step	Can it be done from abroad?	What decides it
Investor documents	Yes. This happens in your own country	Notarised at home, then apostilled, or consular-legalised where the Apostille Convention does not apply between the two countries
Filing the registration	Yes, through an authorised agent, at the counter or through the online registration system	A signed power of attorney. The agent’s own identity is verified as well
Real-name verification at the registry	Depends on the city and on the identity document held	The registry’s real-name system, or the fallback the rules allow: a notarised identity document, or attendance in person
Corporate bank account	Sometimes. An authorised person can present the file, but the bank must still reach the legal representative	The bank. It may verify face to face, by video or by similar means, and chooses according to its view of the customer’s risk
Tax real-name registration	Depends on the province	How the provincial tax bureau implements real-name tax handling, and the channels it offers

The registry: the filing is remote, identity is personal

The implementing rules for market entity registration (SAMR Order No. 52, in force 1 March 2022) let an applicant act in person or through a designated representative or an entrusted agent (Article 14), and file at the registry counter or through the online registration system (Article 17). The company registration measures in force from 10 February 2025 (SAMR Order No. 95, Article 16) add that an agent must state that they act as agent and submit a power of attorney.

Registration agents now have their own rule. Measures issued jointly by SAMR and the People’s Bank of China, in force from 15 September 2025, say the power of attorney must state the agent’s name, the matters delegated, the scope of authority and the term, and be signed by both sides. The agent must tell the registry that they act as agent. Registries are told to strengthen real-name checks on agents and registration liaisons, and the agent must help the people named in the filing complete real-name confirmation.

Order No. 52 (Article 16) requires real-name verification, by face recognition or similar means, of the legal representative, shareholders, directors, supervisors and senior managers, the registration liaison, the recipient of legal documents for a foreign-invested company, and the agent. Where a person cannot be verified through the system for special reasons, it allows a notarised identity document instead, or attendance in person with the identity document.

How that works for a foreign passport holder differs by city, and sometimes by district. Beijing’s market regulator announced in January 2024 that passport-holding investors could verify by face recognition in its online filing tool; before that they supplied an apostilled identity document from their home country, or verified through a bank card opened in mainland China. In Wuhan, the East Lake High-Tech Zone (Optics Valley) reported a similar change in August 2024, under a Hubei provincial pilot: a simpler identity check plus an electronic signature. Before it, the choice was a notarised and legalised identity document or signing at the counter. The report covers that zone, not the whole city. Do not assume another registry matches either. Ask the registry that will handle your filing, for the document you actually hold.

The bank: it must reach the legal representative

Under the People’s Bank of China measures on corporate settlement accounts, issued with its notice of 2 February 2019, the legal representative may authorise another person to handle the account opening, on a letter of authorisation and both people’s identity documents. Separately, when a company opens its basic deposit account the bank must verify the company’s intention to open it with the legal representative, and keep a record. The measures say the bank may do this face to face, by video or by similar means, and that the bank chooses the method according to the customer’s level of risk.

So video verification is permitted, and it is the bank’s choice, not the customer’s. Whether it is offered to a legal representative who lives abroad is a question to put to the bank, and to the branch that will hold the account, before the bank is chosen.

Tax: real-name handling is implemented province by province

Tax bureaus identify the individuals who act for a taxpayer before handling its tax matters. Shanghai’s announcement on real-name tax handling (2017, amended 2018) counts the legal representative among those people, collects name, identity document number, mobile number and a facial image, and accepts a foreign passport as a valid identity document.

A Guangdong tax service guide, as published by the Jiangmen bureau in August 2022, described a route for one special circumstance: a legal representative who holds a foreign passport, lives abroad long term, cannot complete the step online and cannot attend a tax service hall. A representative who was already real-name verified and linked to the company could complete it, on an application form and photographs of the legal representative holding the identity document. Confirm that the route is still offered before relying on it. Not every province publishes one.

What to settle before you commit

1. Who the legal representative will be. Every real-name step attaches to that person. A legal representative who lives in China changes the answer to most of this page. It also hands a real power to that person, so it is a control decision first and a travel decision second.
2. The registry’s verification route at the registry that will handle the filing, for the identity document each named person holds.
3. The bank’s verification method for a legal representative abroad, asked of the branch, before the bank is chosen.
4. The tax bureau’s real-name channel for a foreign passport holder in that province.
5. The form of the power of attorney each body will accept. The registry’s version must name the agent, the matters, the authority and the term. The bank and the tax bureau each ask for their own authorisation. Ask whether each must be notarised and apostilled with the other home-country documents, and how it must be translated.

Start the home-country documents first. Nothing about them depends on a Chinese decision, and every remote route above runs on them.