I live in Shenzhen and work in the IT myself (Tencent/QQ), but I cannot fully recommend it for startups:
1. GFW, you absolutely NEED a VPN to get access to Facebook, Twitter many blogs, YouTube etc etc
2. There are very very few Western IT people in the city. There is no community with meetings etc.
3. Though more and more people speak English, many people speak still very little English. Especially all official documents, all practical matters... all in Chinese
4. House prices are very very expensive, offices also. You say rents are cheap,... not really. Perhaps compared to Western cities, but even then the gap is narrowing quickly.
On the plus side:
- many Chinese study Computer Science and there are many very bright young students eager for a job.
- salaries are still relatively low (though higher than you perhaps would expect)
- weather ain't bad if you can stand the summer heat :)
- food is cheap, I eat in restaurants every day.
- Shenzhen tries to focus on innovation and high-tech, I think you can apply for some subsidies
You'd need to set up two companies, one in the Mainland and one in Hong Kong, when doing it in China. Use the Mainland one for stuff involving low costs, and the Hong Kong one for when you start making money, for the legal protections.
What's the visa situation like? Can you get a visa to stay there for 6 months or more? What I'm seeing online is that it is a large amount of red tape, requiring a local business, for instance, to sponsor you. Which is probably pretty hard to do if you're not their employee.
Would appreciate a specific link or name for the visa you're using and how you went about getting it...
I'm reading your blog post and you talk about the level of regulation in germany... but my impression is that in china it is worse, and further it is impenetrable. Of course, I've never been to china.
Actually, it is likely we will domicile our business in another country. What we're looking for is a location where costs are low and the spirit is high and where the infrastructure we need -- namely a good connection to the internet-- is available.
I'm glad to hear that renting is easy. I would have assumed that foreigners were unusual and thus it would be hard to find someone interested in renting to one.
It sounds like my preconceived notions about mainland china are wrong. Thanks!
Getting a visa for China is much simpler than getting a visa for Europe (and I imagine for the USA). I get a 1-year multiple-entry visa every year without problems, though with help of my employer.
