Requirements for Personal Appearances During COVID-19

Due to COVID-19 some foreign employees of our client depart China without completing the deregistration formality of their China residency permits. On a China immigration regulation for national employees are required to deregister their China residency permit when their employment or assignment ends in China and before they depart from the country. Personal appearance was mandatory, and the person's passport would need to be submitted to the authority to process the deregistration application. Our client ran into compliance challenges given the effected employee was unable to return to China to complete this process. We immediately engaged with the government authority in various locations to identify interim solutions. We also provided immediate support, including pre-writing a list of potentially affected employees, and also preparing application documents required by the government authority to process the application under the exceptional circumstances. Ultimately, we have been able to complete to the procedure under these challenging circumstances, in a timely manner and also in return help our client to mitigate compliance risk.