Following the implementation of China's Unified Work Authorization policy in April, work authorization applicants have encountered occasional downtime of the unified online application system. There were reports that the system has gone offline suddenly in the middle of completing an application, leading to applicants having to re-submit the same application.

Additionally, the Expert Bureau is currently upgrading the system from version 1.0 to 2.0, which has further slowed down the online application processing time. At the same time, the Expert Bureau is also transferring work authorization applications filed under the older version into the newer one. As a result, some minor loss of data may occur during the transfer due to the system upgrades. In such cases,  applicants may need to re-encode any missing information in the new system for previously lodged applications. The completion date for the data transfer has not been announced publicly.

What This Means for Employers and Foreign Nationals
The current instability of the unified online application system has caused delays in the processing of work authorizations applications, which results in the unpredictability of expected approval dates and can cause onboarding delays for employers and foreign nationals.

Employers that have filed urgent cases under version 1.0 of the online application system should re-submit any pending applications to system version 2.0 in order to accelerate the application process.

Fragomen China is closely monitoring the situation and will report on further details as they become available. This alert is for informational purposes only. If you have any questions, please contact the global immigration professional with whom you work at Fragomen or send an email to CNInitiations@fragomen.com.

Fragomen in China is Fragomen (Shanghai) Co. Ltd., operating exclusively as an immigration consultancy and not as a law firm in China.

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