China Law Blog

Can I ask which apartment complex? Or in the alternative, what documents do they want to see? Are passport and visa good enough, or do they want residential registration papers as well?

so it's still something of a police state.

@JT I guess the answer is 'any documents they might ask for' i.e., all of them.

great thanks for sharing " Take the funky passport with you whiteboy" .. ;)

In Beijing they have come to our house and asked to see passports, work visas for the adults, and residence permits for each person in the household including kids. Very polite, but very persistent.

Can't speak directly regarding Shanghai, but here in Beijing they usually want to see: 1) passport and visa, 2) residence registration card from the local police station and 3) if you are working, the employment book.

This is definitely true in light of the new real-name bus/boat tickets and possibly starting to check id's/passports at train stations. Even now if you want to enter the airport to meet someone, it would seem you'll need a passport to get in.

I'm a little disappointed though, I always hear about these sweeps and am prepared, but even when my visa/residence registration was down to a week, I never got a visit from my local "jingcha shushu"...

I haven't heard of anything like this in Chengdu, where I've been living for the past several months. Sichuan lives up to its reputation as a more relaxed place--harassing and spying on foreigners is apparently not part of the government's standard operating procedure.

b.cheng: Seems to me it depends which part of the city you're in. Around my little corner of Beijing nobody's bothered, and I suspect that's because there's a greater than 90% chance that any random foreigner on the street here is a student or staff member of our university, and therefore properly visa'ed, registered, and residence permitted.

Last time I was up in the CBD, which is only 3km north of where I live, there were notices pasted on every door in SOHO reminding foreigners of the legal requirement to register at the local cop shop, but, as always, I didn't see any police checking any IDs.

I was chatting to a freind who lives near Wudaokou yesterday and he was telling me there are pretty strict checks on the ID of all foreigners up there, to the point where they even closed off Chengfu Lu and checked the passports of every single foreigner trying to get in to Wudaokou. Wudaokou, though, is probably the kind of area that would attract more of the troublesome, dodgy kind of foreigner.

I guess its a case of you get what you asked for. The cops stopped by this morning to pay me a visit (though I wasn't in) because my visa was about to expire. Unfortunately, I wasn't in so I couldn't explain to them that I have a new visa in my new passport (which has a different number) and have already registered with them. Oh well, seems that they aren't as efficient as I previously gave them credit for, can't wait to see how bumbling they are tomorrow with the difficulty of understanding my passport number changed...

In Shanghai, police have conducted quite stricter checks, but mostly in compounds with higher numbers of foreigners , where they stay at the gates and check every foreigner in and out.
My last arrival date in Shanghai: July 7, I live in Huangpu, in a mid-level new compound, but with few foreigners. Went to register on July 8, had to go again the next day to add the copy of the house deed, that I asked to my landlord by fax...
Right now, they concentrate more on finding people who may stay without registering AND who perform a work without proper visa Z...
I have heard there were quite lot of suddenchecks in some offices /organizations, and not just in homes
To William: maybe in Sichuan, they believe the population already got other hardships...
But the law is same everywhere, and not just since April 2008..
However, I would not bet that it is 100% safe in Sichuan...
Right now, Xin*j(iang is a locked-up place, and Sichuan, with its various minorities population could also be soon a very controlled place

It looks like the police may not be singling out just foreigners. Two days ago, a notice (in Chinese) appeared next to the elevator in my building announcing that the police would be conducting checks over the next few days of all people residing there without a hukou. The notice also listed the documents they needed to show the police when they come to the door. Last night, around 9:00, when I got home from work, I noticed a gang, er 'group', of young men in army fatigues gathered around the gate of my compound. They didn’t stop me last night, but I’ll definitely have my passport ready and at hand tonight.