Can I register a company in China without visiting?

Usually most of it, not all. National law already permits fully electronic registration (全程网办), with an electronic licence and electronic signature of equal effect. What it does not waive is real-name verification of the legal representative and the shareholders, and an ordinary foreign passport cannot be enrolled in that system. The bank and tax steps turn on the same problem.

The question has two halves and they have different answers. Registering the company is a filing, and Chinese law has allowed a filing to be made entirely online for years. Making the company usable means a bank and a tax bureau each identifying a named individual. That second half is where the travel question is actually decided, and it is decided by whether that individual can be enrolled in a Chinese identity system, not by the registration rules.

Can the filing itself be done online?

Yes, and the national instruments are unambiguous about it. An electronic business licence has the same legal effect as a paper one (State Council Order 746, Article 22).^⁠[1] The implementing rules make full electronic registration a mandate rather than an option, give a reliable electronic signature the same effect as a handwritten signature or a chop, and repeat the electronic licence rule (SAMR Order 52, Articles 3, 15 and 23).^⁠[2] Neither instrument contains an article requiring the applicant, the legal representative or a shareholder to attend anywhere.

The direction of travel is the same. From 1 May 2026 every registration authority uses the 2026 edition of the national forms and submission standards, which expressly recognises confirmation made online by electronic signature or real-name confirmation, and tells registrars not to repeat an identity check already satisfied at submission.^⁠[3] It also adds a real-name confirmation form, so the standard is buying more identity assurance, not less.

So what actually needs a person?

Real-name verification. Article 16 of SAMR Order 52 requires the registration authority, by face recognition or similar means, to verify the identity of the legal representative, the shareholders of a limited liability company, the directors, supervisors and senior managers, the registration liaison, the recipient of legal documents for a foreign-invested company, and the agent.^⁠[2] It is compulsory, and it is the only compulsory personal step in the registration itself.

The same article provides what happens when the system cannot verify someone: where for special reasons a person cannot be verified through the real-name system, they may submit a notarised identity document, or attend in person with their identity document.^⁠[2] The company registration measures in force from 10 February 2025 name the three routes in one breath, which is the clearest statement that attending is one of three alternatives rather than a requirement.^⁠[4]

Why an ordinary foreign passport is the real obstacle

Because the fallback is not the exception for a foreign investor; it is the normal case. The real-name systems match a person against Chinese identity records, and a foreign passport has nothing to match against. The cities that publish their eligible-document lists say so plainly. Shenzhen’s announcement on real-name authentication of overseas persons lists the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residence permit, the overseas Chinese passport, the Mainland Travel Permit for Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan residents and the foreigner’s permanent residence card, and excludes a foreign passport in terms.^⁠[5] Shanghai’s identity verification guide lists the same shape of documents, verified through a municipal app.^⁠[6]

So the honest summary of the national position is two sentences. The law permits the whole registration to be done remotely. Each city has to build a way for your particular identity document to enter its system, and for an ordinary foreign passport most have not, which is why the statutory fallback of a notarised identity document or attendance in person is what a foreign founder usually meets.

Which cities have solved it, and for whom

Three routes get cited as evidence that China has gone fully remote. Each is real and each is narrower than its headline. Read the middle column before planning around any of them.

Route	Who it is actually open to	In force since
Shanghai cross-border digital identity(跨境数字身份认证)	Singapore corporate investors, acting through an authorised signatory, registering a foreign-invested enterprise in Shanghai. A bilateral pilot built with Singapore’s infocomm regulator and the Singapore Academy of Law, using distributed digital identity and verifiable credentials. It removes the notarised paper, not the identity check	Announced 26 November 2025 as a pilot. One investor was reported in February 2026 to have had its licence in two days, which is a company’s account rather than a published standard
Shenzhen audio-video signature(音视频双录)	Holders of a Mainland Travel Permit, a Hong Kong, Macao or Taiwan residence permit, or a foreigner’s permanent residence card. Not an ordinary foreign passport. A face scan and a spoken confirmation replace a paid digital certificate, for establishment and deregistration	Piloted in Yantian and Qianhai from 1 August 2023, citywide from 1 August 2024
Shenzhen to Hong Kong registration link(深港通注册易)	Hong Kong and Macao investors, who file at a partner bank’s branch in Hong Kong or Macao. The branch takes the papers and enters the details for the Shenzhen registry	Re-issued 29 May 2024. This is “no need to travel to Shenzhen”, which is not the same as no attendance and no paper

A useful counterweight to all three: Qianhai’s own published procedure for establishing a foreign-invested enterprise, updated 2 September 2025, still has the applicant attend its service centre to take a number and hand over paper.^⁠[11] Where a city offers both, the online route is a route, not the only one.

The bank account

No national rule requires the legal representative to appear. The measures governing corporate settlement accounts provide that the legal representative may handle the opening directly or authorise someone else to, on an authorisation letter and both identity documents, and they impose no attendance, video or face-to-face requirement anywhere.^⁠[12] The rule that changed is not an account rule at all. Since 1 January 2026 the anti-money-laundering measures on customer due diligence expressly contemplate a financial institution establishing a relationship by non-face-to-face means over the internet or mobile communications, provided it builds an effective customer authentication mechanism to confirm that the identity is genuine and the transaction reasonable.^⁠[13]

That is permission, not entitlement. The regulation places the whole authentication burden on the bank, so whether a legal representative living abroad is onboarded by video is the bank’s own risk decision. It is a question to put to the branch that will hold the account, before the bank is chosen rather than after.

Real-name tax registration

This is usually the step that forces a visit. A foreign passport is an accepted document type for tax registration,^⁠[14] but the verification step is face recognition against Chinese records, which a foreign passport cannot pass. The published guides describe the consequence rather than a workaround: the Jiangmen tax bureau’s real-name guide lists the tax service hall and the electronic channels together, and provides for an authorised person to complete it only in the special case of a legal representative permanently resident abroad who can neither complete it themselves nor reach a tax service hall.^⁠[15] The concession tells you what the default is.

One thing not to look for: there is no national regulation called the real-name tax handling rules. The national basis is a 2016 State Taxation Administration opinion implemented through provincial announcements, so the answer for your company is set by the provincial tax bureau, and it has to be asked of that bureau.

Step	Can it be done from abroad?	Who decides
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 or online, on a power of attorney	National law, which permits it outright
Real-name verification	Only if your identity document can enrol in that city’s system	The registry, and in practice the document you hold
Corporate bank account	Sometimes. Permitted since 1 January 2026, and entirely the bank’s decision	The bank, and the specific branch
Real-name tax registration	Usually not, first time	The provincial tax bureau

What to settle before you commit

1. Who the legal representative will be. Every personal step above attaches to that individual, and the role carries exposure that outlasts the registration.
2. Whether that person’s identity document can enrol in the real-name system of the city that will handle the filing. Ask about the document actually held, not about foreigners in general.
3. The bank’s verification method for a legal representative abroad, asked of the branch, before the bank is chosen.
4. The provincial tax bureau’s real-name channel, and whether it offers an authorised-agent route.
5. The form of the power of attorney each body will accept. The registry, the bank and the tax bureau each want their own, and each may want it notarised and apostilled with the rest of the home-country documents.

Start the home-country documents first. Nothing about them waits on a Chinese decision, every remote route above runs on them, and which of them need notarisation and an apostille is a question you can answer today.

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