The Exit and Entry Administration Law Is Being Rewritten: What a Foreign National Should Assess Now

Delta Law Expat Services Desk　｜　State Council 2026 Legislative Work Plan（《国务院2026年度立法工作计划》, Guobanfa〔2026〕No. 14）, annex item 11, read against the Exit and Entry Administration Law（《中华人民共和国出境入境管理法》）in force from 2013-07-01.

1. The documents at a glance

2. What the Plan actually says

That sentence states an intention to submit, and places the project in a policy grouping. It does not say when submission will happen, what the draft will contain, or whether the project will proceed at all in this cycle. Everything beyond the sentence is speculation, and this page does not engage in it.

3. Which provisions fix your status today

A foreign national's position in China is not a single permission; it is a set of separate statuses, each created and evidenced by a different provision. Whatever a future draft does, those are the provisions against which your present position is assessed, and they are the ones worth knowing precisely.

The two figures at the end are the reason a residence permit is not a stable fact about a person. It expires on its own terms, it is tied to the grounds on which it was granted, and the file that supported it is what makes the next application straightforward. Article 30 is therefore the anchor for the opening item on the assessment list in section 5 below.

This is the most frequently overlooked duty in the Law, and the one most likely to be discovered late — at a permit renewal, at a change of address, or when a landlord's own records are checked. It generates a record that either exists or does not, which is exactly the kind of thing worth confirming while nothing is at stake.

Two authorisations, not one, and the prohibition in the second sentence runs against the employer as well as the individual. Where a role changes, an entity is restructured or a secondment is extended, the question is whether both documents still match what the person is actually doing.

Note that the Chinese thresholds are inclusive at both ends: 五千元以上 means RMB 5,000 or more, and 二万元以下 means RMB 20,000 or less. Chapter 6 of the Law, on investigation and repatriation, sits alongside chapter 7 and governs the measures that may be applied while a question is being examined. Together they explain why a documentary gap is worth closing before anyone asks about it.

One further observation about how these provisions fit together. Chapter 4 creates the status, article 39 creates a record of where the holder actually lives, article 41 creates the authorisation to work, and chapter 7 attaches consequences to gaps in any of them. They are not four separate compliance topics; they are four views of the same file. A question raised under one of them is usually answered — or not answered — by the documents generated under the others, which is why assembling them together is more useful than checking each in isolation.

4. Where administrative regulations have already moved

The structural point worth noticing is that changes affecting foreign nationals have recently arrived through administrative regulations rather than through the Law. That pattern is a fact about what has already happened; it is not a basis for inferring what a draft will contain.

That decision took effect on 2025-10-01 and is already in force. A new visa category was created without touching the Law itself, which is the ordinary division of labour between a statute and the regulations made under it.

Article 3, first paragraph states a requirement about the grounds of an application, expressed as a general duty rather than as a list of documents. A general duty of that kind is satisfied, in practice, by being able to show that the grounds recorded in each application matched the facts at the time — which again points at records rather than at arguments.

5. What to assess and document now

A word on what not to do. A listing in an annual legislative plan is not a reason to change a lawful arrangement, to bring forward or postpone an application, or to restructure an entity. No draft exists to plan against, and a change made in anticipation of a rule that has not been written carries its own risk: the arrangement has to be justified under the provisions that are in force today, and those are the ones set out in section 3. The sensible posture in a revision window is to be accurately documented under the current Law, not to be positioned for a text nobody has seen.

It is also worth being clear about who else holds part of the file. An employer holds the work permit application and the employment records; a landlord or host may hold the accommodation registration; a group head office may hold the secondment paperwork. Where a document you would need is held by someone else, the time to obtain a copy is now, while the relationship is intact.

None of this is a response to the revision. It is what a person in a permission-based status should be able to produce on request. The listing of the project is simply a good reason to do it this quarter rather than next year.