What China's own immigration authority currently publishes. Not a ranking, not a guarantee, and not the same as what any agent or forum will tell you. Whether someone actually obtains residence depends on occupation, points, funds and policy that can change between application and graduation.
Work during study
International students' work-study activity, on or off campus, is governed by a joint measure issued by the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security and the National Immigration Administration (教育部办公厅等四部门关于印发《高等学校国际学生勤工助学管理办法》的通知, effective from 29 December 2021). In principle, it must not exceed 8 hours a week or 40 hours a month; during winter and summer holidays, the limit rises to 16 hours a week and 80 hours a month. To work off campus at all, a student must additionally be at least 18 years old, hold a valid study-category residence permit with at least 6 months of validity remaining, have studied continuously at their current institution for more than a year (covering undergraduate, postgraduate, further-study and visiting-scholar students), meet the school's own academic-progress and attendance standards, comply with Chinese law and school discipline, and meet any further condition the school itself sets. An off-campus arrangement must also be registered: within 10 days of signing an agreement with an employer, the student must apply to the local public security exit-entry authority to have the work unit and duration annotated on their residence permit, and an unannotated permit may not be used for off-campus work.
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Post-study work visa
Residence permit for private affairs, marked "entrepreneurship" (创业) — for graduates of Chinese higher education . Up to 5 years
China does not publish a general post-study job-search visa of the kind Canada, Australia, the UK or several other countries in this dataset do; the National Immigration Administration's own guidance instead sets out a narrower, entrepreneurship-specific route. An outstanding foreign graduate with a bachelor's degree or higher from a 'key' Chinese institution of higher learning who goes on to engage in innovation and entrepreneurship in China can apply for a residence permit for private affairs, annotated "entrepreneurship," valid for two to five years, on presentation of their graduation certificate and innovation/entrepreneurship certificates. A separate, shorter version applies to a graduate of an "internationally renowned" university (Chinese or overseas) who comes to China to pursue innovation and entrepreneurship within two years of graduating: that residence permit is capped at two years, granted on the academic/degree certificate alone. Neither version is itself a work permit — a graduate who instead takes salaried employment with an enterprise or other entity must separately apply for the ordinary work-type residence permit like any other foreign employee.
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Route to permanent residence
China's permanent residence system (the 'Chinese green card,' formally the Certificate of Permanent Residence of Aliens) is governed by State Council-approved regulations administered by the Ministry of Public Security, and its published eligibility criteria — current on the National Immigration Administration's own site as of this reading — carry no study- or graduate-specific track at all. An applicant must be law-abiding, healthy and free of a criminal record, and meet one of a short, closed list of conditions: (1) direct, stable investment in China for three consecutive years running to a set minimum (from USD 500,000 in an encouraged industry or a western/poverty-relief county, up to USD 2 million elsewhere in the country), with a sound tax record; (2) at least four consecutive years in a senior post — deputy general manager, deputy factory director or higher, or an associate-professor/associate-research-fellow-equivalent post — at a qualifying institution, with at least 3 of those years actually spent in China and a sound tax record; (3) 'major and outstanding contributions to China' or being someone China 'urgently needs'; or (4)-(7) specific family-reunification grounds (spouse or unmarried minor child of someone in categories 1-3; spouse of a Chinese citizen or of a permanent resident after 5 years of marriage and 5 years' actual residence in China; a minor child joining a parent; or an elderly person over 60 with no direct relatives abroad joining relatives already in China, after 5 years' residence). A recent international graduate does not fit any of these categories on the strength of their degree alone — the entrepreneurship residence permit described under postStudyWork is a separate, temporary status, not permanent residence, and this dataset found no published bridge connecting the two.
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Route to citizenship
Chinese nationality is governed by the Nationality Law of the People's Republic of China (in force since 1980), administered through the Ministry of Public Security's exit-entry system and China's diplomatic missions abroad; the National Immigration Administration publishes the law's text directly. Article 7 sets naturalisation eligibility for a foreign national or stateless person willing to abide by China's Constitution and laws to one of three grounds: being a near relative of a Chinese national, having settled in China, or having 'other legitimate reasons' — the law does not define 'settled in China' or 'other legitimate reasons' any further, and does not set out a route tied to studying or working in China as such. Article 8 then states the central, decisive condition for anyone considering it: a person whose naturalisation application is approved 'shall not retain foreign nationality' — made unambiguous elsewhere in the same law by Article 3, which states plainly that 'The People's Republic of China does not recognize dual nationality for any Chinese national.' A foreign graduate naturalising as Chinese must therefore give up their original nationality; there is no dual-citizenship option.
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New entry added 19 August 2026. Two Chinese government domains added to IMMIGRATION_DOMAINS in scripts/verify.mjs: nia.gov.cn (National Immigration Administration, covering its en.nia.gov.cn English-language subdomain, the actual immigration/residence/nationality authority) and moe.gov.cn (Ministry of Education, the co-issuing authority for the international-student work-study measure and the natural authority for a rule specifically about students). workDuringStudy is cited to the Chinese-language original of the Ministry of Education notice (moe.gov.cn) because no equivalent English-language page stating the same figures directly was found on an official domain this pass — the same approach already used elsewhere in this dataset for South Korea, Turkey, Italy and France, where the archived quote is in the source's own language and the English is this project's translation/paraphrase in `value`, not a literal quote. inDemandOccupations is left null: this dataset found no Chinese government page publishing a shortage-occupation or priority-sector list gating a specific visa or permit, unlike Canada, Australia, the UK or Germany. naturalisationStatus set to 'published-route': Article 7 of the Nationality Law states real conditions (near-relative ties, having settled in China, or an unspecified 'other legitimate reasons' ground) rather than nothing at all, even though — as recorded above — the law does not spell out a specific study- or work-based path the way an immigration-points system does, and China is widely understood to grant naturalisation only rarely; per the doc comment on ResidencyPathway.naturalisationStatus this field records only whether criteria are published, not how attainable the route is in practice. residencyRoute similarly records a published permanent-residence system that carries no study-or-graduate-specific ground — this is stated as what the regulation says, not as an editorial judgement that China is closed to graduates in practice. citizenshipTerms records minimumResidenceYears null because the Nationality Law publishes no residence period at all: Article 7 sets three qualifying grounds (near relative of a Chinese national, settled in China, other legitimate reasons) and never defines a number of years. Route is application because an individual applies to the authorities under Article 7 rather than being nominated.