How long does it take to register a company in China?

Company registration (公司注册) is fast; the project around it is not. A complete file is registered the same day, and six working days is the ceiling (Market Entity Registration Regulation, Article 19). The government’s start-up target, which covers five steps but not the bank, is four working days. Months go on document legalisation abroad, premises and banking.

Timelines quoted for Chinese company registration run from two days to half a year, and most of that spread is not about China. It is about which parts of the process a quote includes. The registry’s own step is short and bounded by law;^⁠[1] everything measured in months sits either side of it, in assembling a file the registry will accept and in turning a licence into a company that can receive money.

How long does it take to get a Chinese business licence?

Same day, for a file that is complete and in proper form. Article 19 of the Market Entity Registration Regulation (State Council Order 746, in force 1 March 2022) requires the registration authority to carry out a formal review (形式审查), confirm a complete application and register it on the spot. Where it cannot register on the spot, it has three working days, and the head of the authority may approve a further three where the case is complicated. Six working days is therefore the statutory ceiling. The same article requires an incomplete file to be met with a single notice listing everything that has to be corrected.^⁠[1] The implementing rules carry the same clock, require the business licence (营业执照) to be issued promptly once the registration is made, and add that the file is handed back with that notice, and that any extension of the three working days is notified to the applicant in writing.^⁠[2]

The phrase “formal review” is doing real work. The registry is checking that the documents are the right documents, properly executed and internally consistent; it is not forming a view on whether the business is a good one. And the six working days are a ceiling on a file that is already complete, so none of the waiting that precedes them belongs to the registry.

What does the official four-working-day target cover?

Five things: registering the company, having the chops carved, applying for invoices for the first time, enrolling employees for social insurance (员工参保登记), and registering the company with the housing fund. The government calls that bundle 企业开办 (starting a business). A 2019 opinion of the market regulator and four other ministries cut what was then a four-step bundle to three, by folding the employer’s own social insurance registration (社保登记) into the registration step, and set the target at five working days: two for the registration, one for the chops, two for the invoices.^⁠[3] A 2020 notice of the same regulator and five other departments cut the target to four working days, to be reached across the country before the end of that year, and added the housing fund registration to the bundle. It sets no step-by-step split, so the four days are an aggregate.^⁠[4]

A bank account is not in the four-working-day target. The 2019 opinion states that a company applying for invoices for the first time does not have to supply bank account details,^⁠[3] and the 2021 follow-up put four post-registration steps onto one online platform: chop carving, invoices and tax equipment, employee social insurance registration, and the employer’s housing fund registration. The same notice goes further only where a city is equipped for it: there a company may fill in its account-opening application on the platform, which passes it to the bank the company has chosen. Even then the bank opens the account on its own terms.^⁠[5] A promise of “a company in a week” is built on that target, and the target is sound. It measures the government’s part and only the government’s part.

How long does it take to register a company in Shanghai, Shenzhen or Beijing?

The same as anywhere else in China, because the clock is national. Article 19 binds every registration authority in the country, a Shanghai district office and a county one alike: a complete file is registered on the spot, and six working days is the outside limit wherever it is filed.^⁠[1] What differs between cities is everything around that step: which addresses a registry will accept, how soon an appointment comes up, and how far the city has taken the online platform past the four steps every city has to put on it.^⁠[5] A city changes what surrounds the registration, not the registration itself.

What are the steps to register a company in China, and who controls each one?

Ten steps, and the registry controls only some of them. The ones that usually take the time sit elsewhere: with the notary and the authority that certifies the documents abroad, with the sector regulator behind a licensed business scope, with the local rules on premises, with the tax authority and with your bank. That is why a single number for the whole process is always an assumption about whichever step runs slowest, and why it is worth knowing which steps can run in parallel.

Step	How long, and what decides it	Set by
Company name(名称)	No queue. The applicant declares the name and the system compares it automatically. Once the declaration is complete the name is held for 2 months, or 1 year where the company, or an item in its business scope, needs approval before registration	Enterprise Name Registration Implementation Measures (SAMR Order 82), Articles 21 and 25⁠[6]
Business scope(经营范围)	Items are selected from a published catalogue, not written freehand. Where an item needs approval before registration (前置审批), the approval document is filed with the application, so the sector regulator sets the date. An item approved after registration does not hold up the licence	Market Entity Registration Regulation, Article 14; implementing rules, Article 12⁠[1,2]
Investor documents	Set by your own country, and by the Chinese mission’s queue where consular legalisation is still required. Usually the longest step, and the one most often started last	Implementing rules, Article 24: notarised at home, then legalised by the Chinese mission unless a treaty provides otherwise. Since 7 November 2023 the Apostille Convention is that treaty wherever it is in force between China and the country of origin: most countries, but not India⁠[2,7,8]
Premises(住所)	Depends on the address and the city. Not every address can host a registration	Company Registration Measures (SAMR Order 95), Article 18: proof of lawful use, unless the registry simplifies or waives it and verifies the address through departmental data instead⁠[9]
Registration decision, and the business licence(营业执照)	Same day where the file is complete. Otherwise 3 working days, and 3 more with the approval of the head of the authority where the case is complicated. An incomplete file is returned for correction, with no clock running	Market Entity Registration Regulation, Article 19⁠[1]
Company chops(公章)	You file nothing with the police. The engraver checks your documents and, within 1 day of carving the chops, reports the impression and your details to the county-level public security organ	Provisional Rules for the Printing and Engraving Trade, Article 5, as revised by State Council Order 797 (in force 20 January 2025)⁠[10]
Invoices(发票)	Issued free of charge on the tax authority’s national electronic invoice service platform since 1 December 2024. The authority grants a ceiling on what can be invoiced in a calendar month, and adjusts it	State Taxation Administration Announcement 2024 No. 11 on digital electronic invoices⁠[11]
Social insurance registration	Already done. The employer’s registration happens at the same time as the company registration	Social Insurance Handling Regulation (State Council Order 765), Article 6⁠[12]
Bank accounts	No statutory clock at all. The bank runs its own checks on the company and its people, and a company may hold only one basic deposit account	PBC Measures for RMB Bank Settlement Accounts, Article 4; the account permit was abolished by Yinfa [2019] No. 41⁠[13,14]
Foreign exchange registration	Part of the bank step rather than a separate queue	SAFE Circular 13 of 2015, item 1: banks handle direct investment foreign exchange registration⁠[15]

Why do the home-country documents set the timetable?

The home-country documents set the timetable because they are the only part of the file that turns on a calendar outside China. Article 24 of the implementing rules requires a foreign investor’s proof of corporate existence, or an individual investor’s identity document, to be notarised (公证) in the home country and then legalised by the Chinese embassy or consulate there (领事认证), except where a treaty between China and that country provides otherwise on authentication. Investors from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan take the other route in the same article: their documents are notarised by a local notarial body under the special arrangements that apply to each, and national rules dispense with the notarial document altogether in some cases.^⁠[2]

The treaty exception in Article 24 is now the ordinary route. The Apostille Convention entered into force for China on 7 November 2023, and the Hague Conference counts 130 contracting parties, a figure that includes the ones it is not yet in force for: Thailand acceded on 30 June 2026 and comes in on 28 February 2027.^⁠[7] Where it is in force, a notarisation and one apostille from the competent authority in the country of origin replace the consular step entirely.

India is an exception of a different kind, and it matters if the parent company is Indian. India has been a party since 14 July 2005, but it objected to China’s accession, and under Article 12 an accession takes effect only as regards the contracting states that raised no objection.^⁠[8,16] The Convention is therefore not in force between China and India, and documents from India still go the consular route. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says so in the list of contracting states it publishes.^⁠[8] The mechanics for everyone else are set out in how to get a document apostilled for China.

Do you still need approval from the Ministry of Commerce?

Not as a separate step, and this is the point most English-language guidance still has wrong. Since 1 January 2020 a foreign investor submits an initial foreign investment information report (外商投资信息报告) through the company registration system at the moment it applies to register the company, and the market regulator passes the information to the commerce authorities.^⁠[17] There is no approval to wait for and no second filing window.

What can still stop a registration is the foreign investment access negative list (负面清单). The 2024 list, in force since 1 November 2024, carries twenty-nine items and no manufacturing section at all.^⁠[18] Twenty of them prohibit foreign investment outright, and the other nine attach a condition, usually a Chinese controlling shareholder, a joint venture or a cap on the foreign stake. Outside the list, a foreign investor is managed on the same terms as a domestic one.^⁠[18]

Inside the list, a prohibited item cannot be opened by structuring around it: no joint venture and no minority stake makes a prohibited business investable. Where the list sets a condition instead, an investment that does not meet it is refused the sector permits it needs, refused company registration, and refused any fixed-asset project approval that goes with it, so the condition has to be settled in the company’s own structure before anything is filed. Two routes sit outside the list itself: more favourable opening measures may apply in a free trade zone or under a treaty, and the State Council can disapply the list for a particular investment.^⁠[18] A company’s business scope has to comply with the list as a matter of registration law rather than investment policy.^⁠[9] What the list actually restricts is set out in the negative list explained.

How long does a company name stay reserved?

Two months from the moment the declaration is completed in the name system, and one year where the company itself needs approval to be established, or where its business scope contains an item that needs approval before registration. Both periods are set by Article 25 of the Enterprise Name Registration Implementation Measures. If the registration is not completed inside the reservation period the reservation lapses and the name has to be declared again. There is no pre-approval queue to join: the applicant declares the name, the system compares it automatically and returns a result.^⁠[6]

Founders usually treat the name as the first thing to lock down, and the reservation period rewards the opposite. A declared name is a clock that starts rather than a place in a queue, and it runs while the home-country documents are still with a notary. Declare the name when the rest of the file is close to complete, not on the day the idea is agreed.

Can you register a company without premises?

No. The address, 住所 in the registration rules and 注册地址 in ordinary use, is one of the general registration items, and the application has to carry proof that the company lawfully holds it. A registry may simplify or waive that proof, and where it does, it has to verify through departmental data that the address exists and that the company owns it or has the right to use it.^⁠[1,9] What counts as an acceptable address is set locally, and it varies between cities and sometimes between districts of one city, so it is a question for the registry that will handle your filing rather than one with a national answer.

The lease has to be in a form the registry accepts, and the landlord has to agree to supply it in that form, so it is a negotiation and not a formality. Whether an address can host a registration at all is discovered at the registry rather than at the viewing, which is why the lease is signed at risk.

Why is the bank account the last step and the longest?

The bank account is the last step and the longest because it is a commercial decision rather than an administrative one. No instrument puts a clock on it, and the start-up target leaves it out.^⁠[4] The bank runs its own checks on the company, its shareholders and its legal representative, and both the answer and the speed are the bank’s.

The rules around a corporate account are straightforward. A company may hold exactly one basic deposit account (基本存款账户), which is its main operating account.^⁠[13] Since 2019 that account has been filed with the central bank rather than approved by it, and the old account-opening permit no longer exists.^⁠[14] Whether the legal representative has to appear in person is the bank’s choice rather than the customer’s. That question has a page of its own: can you register a company in China without visiting.

Until the account exists, the company is registered but cannot be funded, and a clock is already running against it. In a limited liability company (有限责任公司), which is how a WFOE or a joint venture is normally set up, Article 47 of the Company Law gives the shareholders five years from establishment to pay in what they subscribed, and Article 33 makes the date the business licence is issued the date of establishment, so the clock starts at the licence rather than at the day the account opens.^⁠[19] Every week between the licence and the account is a week of that five years in which the capital cannot arrive. Choose the bank and book the appointment while the registration is still running.

Do you have to register with SAFE separately?

No. The State Administration of Foreign Exchange stopped approving direct investment foreign exchange registration (外汇登记) on 1 June 2015 and handed the work to the banks, which carry it out under SAFE’s operating guidance.^⁠[15] When foreign currency capital arrives, the account bank itself records the contribution in SAFE’s capital account information system, so nothing is filed by the company at a SAFE counter.^⁠[15]

Converting foreign currency capital into renminbi (RMB) needs no separate permission either. A company may convert as much of its capital as it chooses, up to a share SAFE currently sets at 100 per cent. The renminbi does not go straight into the company’s basic deposit account: it sits in a holding account (结汇待支付账户), and the bank releases it payment by payment, against the transaction each payment is for.^⁠[20] For a timetable the effect is that foreign exchange is not a queue that follows the bank. It sits inside the bank step, and it is part of what that step is waiting on.

Are tax and social insurance separate registrations?

Neither is a separate registration any more. A business licence carries a unified social credit code (统一社会信用代码), the number that identifies the company to the registry and the tax authority alike.^⁠[21] A new company holding such a licence does not register again for tax and is issued no tax registration certificate; it supplies the remaining information the first time it deals with the tax authority, after which the licence serves in place of the old certificate.^⁠[21] The employer’s social insurance registration is completed at the same moment as the company registration, which satisfies the thirty-day duty the Social Insurance Law imposes on a newly established employer.^⁠[12,22]

One duty survives the merger of the tax and social insurance registrations into the licence, and it carries a date: Article 58 of the Social Insurance Law requires the employer to apply to register each new employee for social insurance within thirty days of the day that employee starts work.^⁠[22] Invoicing carries no date at all, which is what catches a new company out. Since fully digitalised electronic invoices (数电发票) went nationwide on 1 December 2024, invoicing runs on a national platform the tax authority provides free of charge, and through that platform the authority grants each company a total invoicing amount (发票总额度): a ceiling, excluding VAT, on what the company may invoice in one calendar month. It is set against the company’s tax risk, its tax credit rating and its actual operations, adjusted as those change, and raised on application where the business has outgrown it.^⁠[11] A new company’s opening ceiling decides when it can invoice at the scale it planned for, and the ceiling is granted after the company exists rather than before.

What makes a registration run long?

Five failure modes account for most overruns, and the registry being slow is not among them. Each one is avoidable, and each is cheaper to avoid than to correct.

1. The file went in incomplete. An incomplete application is returned with one notice of everything that needs correcting, and the clock in Article 19 only ever runs on a file that is complete and in proper form.^⁠[1,2] Filing early with gaps buys nothing and costs a round trip.
2. The address cannot host a registration. This is usually discovered at the registry, after the lease is signed, so the lease becomes a sunk cost as well as a delay.
3. The scope contains a licensed item nobody checked. The catalogue is published, so the item can be found on the first day; it is usually found once the file is assembled, by which point the sector regulator’s queue is in front of the registry’s. The business scope row above says which approvals stop the licence and which do not.
4. The name was declared too early. Two months runs out while the home-country documents are being legalised, the reservation lapses, and the name has to be declared again. The year applies only where an approval is needed first.^⁠[6]
5. The bank was left until the licence was issued. Choosing the bank, asking the branch what it requires of a legal representative who lives abroad, and booking the appointment can all be done while the registration is still running.

What should a timeline quote tell you?

Which of the ten steps the figure covers, and where its clock stops. “Licence in N weeks” and “a company that can receive money in N weeks” are different promises, and it is the second that decides when the business can trade. Ask whether the quoted period includes legalising the home-country documents, securing the premises, the chops, the bank accounts, the foreign exchange registration and the first invoicing quota, and what it assumes about how fast your own side supplies documents.

Ask also who performs the regulated parts of a registration, such as accounting, tax filing and any sector licensing. A quote that does not separate them out is not a quote you can compare with another. What a China company registration quote leaves out covers the rest of that question.

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