China conference visitor checklist

The regulation defines the M class in six characters of purpose: entering to carry out 商业贸易活动, commercial and trade activity. It does not mention conferences, exhibitions, trade fairs or speaking at all, so the class is drawn by the commercial character of what you will do, not by the venue you will do it in. A buyer meeting, a sales booth or a contract negotiation sits on this side whether or not the event calls itself a conference.

F is for entering to take part in 交流、访问、考察等活动 — exchange, visits and study or inspection visits. Read against the M item, the twelve-item class table splits the whole space an event visitor can occupy in two, with nothing in between and no class named after attendance. So the question to settle before booking anything is not which visa sounds right, it is whether the trip is commercial-trade activity or exchange and visiting. Note that the F wording ends in 等 — an open-ended "and the like" — while M does not; that is a drafting difference worth seeing, not a conclusion about any individual trip.

The document that actually gates an M application is an invitation letter issued by a 中国境内商业贸易合作方 — a commercial trade counterparty inside China. This is the clause that decides whether the letter sitting in your inbox is the right letter: an event organiser who is not your trade counterparty is not the issuer this item names, however official their letterhead looks.

An F application takes an invitation letter from 中国境内的邀请方, any inviting party inside China, with no commercial qualifier attached. So the two classes differ in who may invite you as well as in purpose, and that is checkable before you pay for anything: if the only entity willing to put its name on a letter is the conference host rather than a trade partner, that fact itself points at a class.

Around the class-by-class list sits the baseline every applicant meets — application form, passport or other international travel document, a conforming photograph, and the materials for the purpose stated — and the article closes by letting the 签证机关 require 其他申请材料 根据具体情况, other materials according to the circumstances. That closing sentence is why no page, this one included, can hand you a complete document list: the clauses above are the legal floor, not the counter's final word.

The requirement is stated as a pair, not one permit: a 工作许可 (work permit) and a 工作类居留证件 (work-type residence permit). The second sentence is the half travel write-ups leave out — no 单位 and no 个人 may engage a foreign national who lacks both, so the Chinese host, agency or counterparty is under the same prohibition you are. For a visitor deciding what to agree to on site, the duty is not theirs alone.

The law defines 非法就业 itself rather than leaving it to practice, and the item nobody expects is （二）: working 超出工作许可限定范围 — outside the scope your permit is limited to — is illegal employment even when you hold a permit. Someone who arrives for one stated purpose and takes on something else while in the room is inside that item's language. Read what the article does not contain as carefully as what it does: there is no item addressed to attending, speaking at or exhibiting at an event, so the article does not settle those cases in either direction.

For the individual the band is 五千元以上二万元以下罚款 — a fine of 5,000 to 20,000 yuan — and where the circumstances are serious the law says 并处: detention of 五日以上十五日以下 (5 to 15 days) is imposed in addition to the same fine, not instead of it. Two more bands sit in the same article and both have ceilings: introducing a foreign national to illegal employment costs 5,000 yuan per person introduced, capped at 50,000 for an individual and 100,000 for an organisation, and unlawfully employing one costs 10,000 yuan per person employed, capped at 100,000, with unlawful gains confiscated in both cases. That last band is the exposure of whoever asked you to do the work.

The law names the authorities that maintain the catalogue — the 人力资源社会保障主管部门 and the 外国专家主管部门, working with other State Council departments — and says they 制定并定期调整 the 外国人在中国境内工作指导目录: draw it up and adjust it periodically. That is the honest answer to "where is the list of what counts", and it is also why this page refuses to reproduce such a list: the instrument that would settle the question says of itself that it moves. The article's second paragraph sets up the student work-study regime behind item (三) above and is not this page's subject.