China's national citizen services hotline now offers multilingual services to help overseas investors and entrepreneurs, using its complaint-and-response mechanism to remove barriers for cross-border startups.
The hotline answers overseas founders' policy questions, routes their requests to the corresponding government departments and bridges language gaps for international innovators.
Among those benefiting is Ratshilingana Mudanalo Maryline, a South African entrepreneur with a master's degree in space technology engineering from Beijing's Beihang University, who is now working to build a bridge between Chinese and South African enterprises.
"I want to take this technology to Africa, which is South Africa. Then I want to see it practically through me whereby I will bridge the gap between Chinese enterprise and South African enterprise. My vision is to have a license or foreign enterprise here in China," said Maryline.
Setting up a foreign-owned enterprise in China was no easy task. She faced a language barrier, an administrative system conducted in Chinese and documents that had to be authenticated back in South Africa. Maryline said the green channel office in her building is a game-changer for foreigners, with visas, business certificates and many related matters handled in one place, a setup that spared her trips between multiple offices and a significant amount of time.
"And then through the World Geospatial Information Home (WGIH), they also assist us and advise how to start the process, and then they call the relevant government officials for assistance," she said.
That combination of support, the hotline's dedicated multilingual channel and the on-site green channel, helped Maryline secure her business license in seven working days.
Wang Dongbo, a foreign language agent with the Citizen Service Hotline, said English-speaking callers have a line of their own, and the center's language coverage extends much further.
"Button 3 is the English service dedicated for foreigners. Though our center has English specialists, we can provide services in ten languages," said Wang.
Once an inquiry comes in, it is tracked through its full lifecycle, from intake and dispatching to resolution and post-service evaluation. Sustaining that system is a substantial undertaking, and the scale of the operation is matched by the speed with which specialized requests are handled, said Feng Yingyi, deputy director of the Citizen Service Hotline Center.
"There are 750 workstations and over 1,700 agents in this workplace, providing round-the-clock services. When foreign start-ups inquire about AI implementation, we assign the request to the Economic and Technological Development Zone immediately and help build links for enterprises," said Feng.
As demand widens, the hotline continues to refine its cross-border services, smoothing the path for international founders setting up businesses in China.
China's citizen services hotline launches multilingual support for foreign entrepreneurs
