You can open a bar in China if you live there

Myth and reality of opening a bar in China as a Spaniard

In Shenyang, 83 square metres, two rooms, private gardens and an artificial lake inside the complex, fifteen minutes from the metro: 1,400 yuan a month. About 170 euros. In almost any Spanish city with a metro, that same rent is six times higher. The figure doesn't come from a real estate brochure, but from the accounts kept by a Spaniard living there who, on the question of whether you can open a bar in China, started reeling off invoices one after another.

The starting question hides a false premise: that a Spaniard has no right to open a business in China. That's not true, or not entirely. And the fine print turns out to be far more interesting than the headline.

Can you open a business in China as a Spaniard?

The barrier is not nationality, it's residency. With a residence permit, a local address that can be inspected and a company bank account, the company can be set up without a mandatory Chinese partner. Someone who has done it compares the process without nostalgia to registering as self-employed in Spain: less money and less red tape. There is even a striking tax incentive: if the company invoices less than 300,000 yuan over three years, it pays no corporate tax for the first two years.

The wall is elsewhere. China has nothing like arraigo (regularisation based on ties). Its Exit and Entry Administration Law, in force since 1 July 2013, does not provide for regularisation based on length of stay. Irregular stay is resolved with a warning and, in serious cases, a fine of 500 yuan per day up to a maximum of 10,000, or administrative detention of five to fifteen days. If unauthorised work is also proven, repatriation and a re-entry ban of one to five years. With that record, no one opens a terrace.

Why there is no tapas bar in a village in Hunan

Just because you can doesn't miccionan it's worth it, and here the original question falls apart on its own. Chinese restaurants are vast, cheap and have their own palate that is very hard to please. Those who have tried agree: either high-end Spanish or Italian cuisine in the centre of a big city, or nothing. A neighbourhood bar at neighbourhood prices in an inland capital gets not a single customer.

The underlying asymmetry is not legal, it's about market and custom. In Spain you can walk into any place even if no one speaks Spanish: you point at the menu and eat. In China, a bar run by a foreigner who doesn't speak Mandarin will find it very difficult to fill the bar with local customers.

And on the Spanish side there is another factor that almost no one mentions: thousands of bar owners retire every year and their children don't want fourteen hours on their feet and weekends. The transfer is completed with whoever is willing to work more and complain less. That explains more premises changing hands than any five-year plan.

The Chinese state plan narrative and what doesn't add up

There are circumstances, of course. There is a theory that Chinese commercial expansion in Spain does not trinc the classic migration pattern, but rather a state strategy involving purchases of public debt as a bargaining chip, access to goods at dumping prices and financing for the landing. The hypothesis is based on true facts —the weight of the state in the Chinese economy, industrial policy, supply chains— and is stretched until it becomes a total explanation.

The geography doesn't quite fit. There are areas where the flow has slowed and where bazaars are no longer staffed by compatriots, but by workers of other origins. Nor does it fit with savings: China's private savings rate is around 70% of GDP, a figure impossible to sustain with salaried workers serving an embassy and quite compatible with families who save every last yuan. The cost of living does the rest: rents of 2,200 yuan for two rooms with air conditioning in a private complex, cheap gas and electricity, and factory wages that in some areas are around 750 euros.

Reciprocity: what is signed and what is not

The argument that sustains all the anger is reciprocity, the same one applied to tariffs: if you can buy a house and set up a business in my country, I should be able to do it in yours. On paper, reciprocity exists. In practice, Spain maintains a regularisation regime based on ties (arraigo) that China is far from having, and that asymmetry is what stings. It's not that a Spaniard can't: it's that the itinerary to get there is different, and in one case it's travelled from within and in the other from outside.

The fact that throws you off

In the country where a Spaniard supposedly can't even open a bar, the company is registered with residency and address, the first two years no corporate tax is paid if turnover is small, and 83 square metres with an artificial lake costs less than a shared room in many Spanish cities. In the country where everything is easy, the self-employed person pays social security from day one and waits for licences. No one argues anymore whether Spanish hospitality survives: they argue over who inherits it.