Permanent status on the work route requires four years of employment and an income of at least six average regional salaries.
between leaguesmedium confidenceChina runs a guest model: easy and cheap to enter, nearly impossible to settle. The work route has no income threshold, state fees are minimal, and families arrive quickly with no financial test. But permanent residence is cut off by a salary requirement out of reach for an ordinary professional (about $13,900 a month in Beijing), and citizenship is closed.
The main risk is the cost of a mistake. The law sets no grace period after a job ends: the employer must notify the authorities at once and cancel the work permit within 10 working days. You can change jobs without a full procedure only in the same region and the same profession; moving to another city or changing profession means starting over. Losing status can bring 5-15 days of detention, a decision whose appeal does not suspend it, and an entry ban of 1-5 years. Since 15 September 2026 the new Exit and Entry Regulation also imposes a 1-5 year entry ban for false information in visa documents.
A risk the neighbours do not have: exit bans. Legal foreign residents, including executives and staff of foreign companies, are barred from leaving without a transparent procedure; researchers counted 128 documented cases involving foreigners in 1995-2019, and the practice continues. We treat it as systematic.
A worker's spouse gets a visitor's visa with no right to work and must follow the same path as any foreigner. State schools are formally open to children with residence permits, but admission depends on local rules and some schools charge fees. There are no integration courses or language exams for work status.
Day to day you must register with the police within 24 hours of moving in anywhere other than a hotel, and at every change of address; big cities allow this online. You can open a bank account with a residence permit, but a lot depends on the branch.
The index score ignores nationality. This is what changes for citizens of specific countries.
Documented exit ban cases mostly involve citizens of the US, Canada and Japan; the US State Department keeps a warning about arbitrary enforcement of local laws. 240-hour visa-free transit is available.
Dual citizenship is not recognised: the authorities may treat naturalised people from the PRC as Chinese citizens and deny them another country's consular protection.
A separate regime for entry and work applies to them.
Ukraine is on the list for 240-hour visa-free transit with a ticket to a third country. For living and working, the same path through a Z visa and a work permit.
There is no formal closure of the work route by nationality. Visa-free entry for up to 30 days for business, tourism, family visits and transit; on 20 May 2026 the Foreign Ministry extended it to 31 December 2027. Work still requires a Z visa, as for everyone.
There is no formal closure of the work route by nationality. Belarus is on the list for 240-hour visa-free transit with a ticket to a third country; work requires a Z visa.
The place interval 71-86 shows where the country lands when the data is nudged and the index is recalculated. One place of difference in the table means nothing; a difference of a league means something.
Between leaguesThe league holds in fewer than half of the recalculations. Read this country as sitting between two leagues, not as a member of the upper one.
Medium confidenceSome scores rest on second-class sources. The score and the place stand, but read them with that caveat.
The thin mark on each bar is the average across 97 countries
The strongest category here is Settling in: 72 out of 100, against a 97-state average of 69.5. The weakest is Path to citizenship: 7 against 57.1. Above the world average: 2 out of 7.
All 97 states are calculated for one applicant: 35 years old, income of $2,500 and $3,856 a month before tax, passport not counted, the most accessible route that is actually in use.
Your passport, your income and your family do not change the table. They change which of its lines apply to you. A different income makes entry read differently, a family makes the family category read differently, and your passport makes everything read differently.
By law a residence permit takes 15 days, and while it is processed you get a receipt that keeps your stay legal. The work permit has stages of 5-10 working days; legalising your diploma and criminal record check usually takes longest.
No: a Chinese employer requests the work permit. There is no visa for freelancers, the self-employed or remote workers, and remote work for a foreign company from China has no legal status.
The work permit is free; a residence permit costs ¥400 for up to a year and ¥800 for one to three years, per family member. The visa fee depends on nationality; by international standards it is cheap.
Yes, together with your job: there is no grace period, and the employer cancels the work permit within 10 working days. Moving to another city or changing profession means applying again, and breaching your status risks detention and an entry ban of up to 5 years.
On the work route permanent residence requires 4 years of work and a salary of at least six times the regional average, out of reach for an ordinary professional. Citizenship is effectively not granted and dual citizenship is banned.
As guests: entry is easy and cheap and the tax breaks are generous, but staying for good is almost impossible. Status depends on the employer and the city, a spouse cannot work, and exit bans on foreigners remain a real risk.
97 states, 26 indicators, seven categories, 2,522 scores. Every score has a source and a source class: primary means the texts of laws and government portals; reliable secondary means reports by international organisations, tax reviews by audit firms and specialist legal publications; weak means community posts and single secondary sources. The classes add up to a confidence level for the country, and a country with low confidence gets neither a score nor a place.
Every indicator is scored against a fixed ruler, not against its neighbours. Adding new countries therefore does not move the old ones, and a change in a score means a change in policy and nothing else.
A high place does not mean a good country. It means one thing: the state machine treats newcomers predictably and by the rules. Living there may be expensive, dull or hot; that is not our question.
Checked 01/10/2026. Facts come from the country's index card and official websites.
We make mistakes and we will go on making them: policy changes faster than any database. Our answer is not a pose of infallibility but a visible trail of corrections. Every correction is published: what it was, what it became, the source and the reason for the error. The corrections log opens with the second issue, together with the first block of changes.