Can My Employer in China Cancel My Residence Permit if I Quit My Job?

This has been a very controversial issue for many English Teachers in China.

The simple answer is NO

They cannot cancel your residence permit unless you allow them to. There are many gray areas here and depending on who you are working for, your employer can make it either very easy for you to get a new teaching job, or make it almost impossible for you to get a new teaching job in China.

How can I transfer my work permit from one school to another in China?

How can I transfer my residence permit from one employer to another employer in China?

Sorry, I wrote the same question in two different wordings, but I wanted to make sure this article gets ranked on the first page of Google so that it would provide an immensely valuable information for teachers who may want to ditch low paying jobs for much better jobs. After all, if you are reading this article, you probably have taught at a really low paying training center job in China for 1-2 years, and you found out that there are much better-paying teaching jobs in China.

To transfer your work permit, or residence permit from one employer to another employer, or from one school to another, there are three ways. Of course, the first method is the easiest way, the second method is easy as long as you prepare for it, and the third method is the method you probably want to avoid at all cost.

The easiest method of transferring your work permit from one employer to another.

In order to use the first method of transferring your residence permit from one school to another, your school has to be cooperative and make sure they follow the correct timing. They need to do the following:

1. Cancel your Foreign Expert Certificate and give you a release letter on the FEC
2. Provide you an Employment Termination Letter
3. Not cancel your residence permit.
4. Provide you all the above with at least 30 days prior to your residence permit expiring, because in order to extend your residence permit, whether you stay at current school, or move to a new school, the application to extend the residence permit must be submitted no later than 30 days before your residence permit expire.

**** IMPORTANT ****

Many of the lowest paying Employers will NOT let you use the first method of transferring your work permit to the new employer. Not sure if your employer falls in this class? For legal reasons, we cannot disclose the companies and schools that won’t help you transfer your residence permit to a new school, BUT good news. It’s very easy to find out if your employer will help you or not. To find out, it will require a very little effort on your end, I promise.

First, go to Google and type “(School Name) Teacher Reviews” or “(School Name) Reviews” and on the first page, links to Glassdoor reviews may or may not pop up. If you don’t see any Glassdoor reviews on your school, THAT’S PROBABLY A VERY GOOD SIGN. If you are working for what I mentioned to you earlier, the notorious employers/schools that do not help you transfer your residence permit to a new school, you probably are done with your research at this point. Most of the companies and schools have reviews on Glassdoor and/or ESL Teacher Boards/forums. Several other websites exist for such reviews as well.

Second, just ask around to other Teachers. Teachers who arrived at your school 6 months to 1 year ago should know about previous teachers who left and moved on to another school. Ask them for some advice. By the third step of your research, you should have a good grasp as to whether your school will make it easy for you to transfer your residence permit to another school or not.

I just found out my school/company will make it impossible or difficult for me to move to another school.

Well, that’s actually the case of many teachers who are at jobs that pay industry low salaries. Good news- as long as you plan ahead of time, For Teach Recruiting can help teachers move on to better-paying schools, or more suitable jobs. For more details, you can Contact Us or email us at info@www.forteachrecruiting.com.

Here is an overview of what you can do to plan ahead.

First, do not let your employer know that you are interested in leaving the school just yet. Also, if you do plan on changing jobs, make sure you start planning about 4 months ahead. If you do it about 2 months ahead, you will have to pay hefty expediting fees, and lower than 2 months, we may not be able to help you.

Make sure you have the Following:

• Your original reference letters(if applicable)
• TEFL Certificate
• Original Authenticated Diploma certificate.

Then, apply for a Criminal Background Check from the country of which you hold your passport, as the previous one you submitted is probably over 6 months old and no longer valid. After you get your new Criminal Background Check, you need to get it Authenticated. These two processes can take up to 6 weeks. After you get all of your new authenticated documents ready in your hands, now it’s time to get your new job offer on the table. Once you secured a new job, give your current employer a letter of resignation 2 months prior to your leaving date. Your employer will ask you to turn in your passport and they will convert your residence permit to a 30-day stay permit. Let your new employer know this so that they can start preparing your new work permit notification letter. Then, there will be a 1-2 week period where you will just have to be unemployed until your new work permit notification comes out. When this letter is issued, you will go to Hong Kong and get a new Z visa back into China. Also, some schools are able to convert your 30 day stay permit visa back into a residence permit, and they will apply for your new Foreign Expert Certificate. Both ways work, it’s just a matter of which methodology your new employer/school will do.

What do you do once you are at your new job?

Enjoy your higher salary teaching position and feel free to write a review about your previous school visa issues in hopes that they will change the policy for the future.

What if my school already canceled my residence permit and I do not have my documents ready?

I’m really hoping and praying that none of the readers get in this situation. If this above situation is you, then you may have no choice but to go back home and redo the entire process again.

If it’s a hassle to go home, we strongly advise you to NOT Teach English in China illegally on a tourist visa.

What we advise you to do is apply for an online teaching position. You can get paid into your bank account back home and work from your apartment as long as you have internet. You can probably get by doing this for 2 months until you can get all your documents in order for your next work visa to legally Teach English in China.

We really hope this article was helpful and informative. Please share this article as we want to support and help teachers to have a wonderful experience during their time Teaching English in China. As always our personal favorite City to Teach in China is Shenzhen.

Don’t Forget to Check out our Job Board for all of our latest job postings!

Cheers!

For Teach Recruiting