Paths after age 18

Mainland China only 16 tips

These tips describe mainland-China rules and do not apply in the United States; they are here for people living in China.

• 🧭Check the entry requirements first: the age and education requirements for all twelve paths are written down in black and white

  The age and education requirements for these twelve paths are all written in official documents. To work for pay you must be at least 16. To join the military, a man must be at least 18, and college graduates can be allowed up to age 24. To take the civil service exam you must be 18 to 35 and hold at least a junior-college degree (大专). Two paths, the self-study exam (自考) and starting a self-employed business (个体户), look at neither education nor age.

• 📋Register for military service before October 31 of the year you turn 18; conscripts serve on active duty for two years

  Military service registration (兵役登记) is a legal duty. It is not signing up to enlist, and registering does not mean you will go. A man who turns 18 that year has to finish registering online before October 31. If you don't, the county orders you to correct it within a set time, and if you still don't, you can be compelled to fulfill the service obligation and fined. If you do go, conscripts (义务兵) serve on active duty for two years.

• 🛡️Refusing service after being called up means no leaving the country or going back to school for two years, and no civil service or state-owned company jobs

  If you sign up and then refuse to go, the consequences come in a string. You can't be hired as a civil servant, and state-owned enterprises and public institutions (事业单位) can't hire you. For two years you may not leave the country, enroll in further study, or return to school. You are also put on a list of people seriously untrustworthy in meeting their national defense duty. So “sign up first and back out if it doesn't work” is a very expensive idea.

• 🎓The two most solid benefits for college students who enlist: tuition subsidized up to 20000 yuan a year, and a two-year hold on school enrollment plus a special graduate-exam quota

  If a current student, a graduating student, or an incoming freshman enlists, the state pays the tuition for the years of study, based on what was actually paid: up to 20000 yuan a year for junior-college and undergraduate students and up to 25000 yuan for graduate students. If tuition was low to begin with, only the amount actually paid is covered. Your enrollment record is kept for two years. There is also a special graduate-exam plan (考研专项计划) that admits only discharged college-student soldiers.

• 💼After discharge, the government arranges a job in only six situations; those who find their own work must report within 30 days

  “Join the army and get a job assigned” is long since not the general rule. Today the government arranges a job in only six situations, and most conscripts who serve two years and are discharged are not in those six. The group not assigned jobs by the government is called self-arranged employment (自主就业), and it has a hard deadline: you must report within 30 days after leaving active duty. If you go past 30 days without a proper reason, it counts as giving up the placement benefits.

• 🧾Three sums after discharge: a one-time discharge payment, service years counted as work years, and 20000 yuan a year off your taxes if you start a business

  After discharge there are three sums to know. The first is the one-time discharge payment (退役金) for self-arranged employment, paid by the number of years served on active duty, with extra for those who earned merit awards. The second is that the years in the army don't count as a gap in social insurance: military service years count as work years, and contribution years are added together with those before enlisting and after discharge. The third is tax: if you open your own shop or business, you can pay up to 20000 yuan less in tax each year for 3 years.

• 🌱Getting into the government system is not only about the civil service exam: finish two years of a grassroots service program and you can apply for a targeted recruitment plan with 10% of openings each year

  There is more than one way into the government system (体制内). If you finish two years in a grassroots service program such as the Three Supports and One Assistance program (三支一扶) and pass the evaluation, you can apply for a targeted recruitment plan open only to people like you. Each province sets aside about 10% of its yearly civil service recruitment plan to hire these people. If you take the graduate school entrance exam (考研) within three years, 10 points are added to the first-round total score. The cost is that for these two years you live on a government subsidy.

• 🧑‍🏫Special-post teachers (特岗教师) who complete three years of service, pass the evaluation and want to stay should be given permanent staffing promptly

  The Special-Post Teacher Program (特岗计划) is one of the few paths that states “permanent staffing at the end of the term” (入编, getting an official establishment post). The requirements are a bachelor's degree or above, mainly in teacher-training majors, an age of no more than 30, and the right teacher certificate. The term of service is three years, and during those three years pay and benefits are the same as those of permanently staffed teachers at local public schools. If you pass the evaluation after three years and want to stay, the document requires that you be given permanent staffing promptly.

• 🚒Firefighters and civilian staff of the military are two more open-recruitment routes, with lower entry requirements than the civil service exam

  Neither of these paths requires the “junior college or above” bar. Firefighters are recruited from people aged 18 to 22 with a high school education or above, and the age limit can be relaxed to 24 for those with a junior-college degree or above and for discharged soldiers. Military civilian staff (军队文职) only need to be 18 or older, and for entry-level posts the upper age limit at first hiring is 35. The shared cost is that political screening and the medical exam weed people out.

• 📚Your education is not decided once and for all: the self-study exam has no age limit or education requirement, and adult college entrance exams and the Open University can also fill the gap

  If you didn't get to finish school at 18, there are three more regular routes: the self-study exam (自考), the adult college entrance exam (成人高考) and the Open University (开放大学). The self-study exam has no age limit and doesn't look at how far you got in school, but full-time enrolled students can't register. The adult college entrance exam requires a high school or junior-college diploma first. All three routes are slow, but none of them looks at how you did at 18.

• 🛡️Working outside a company is flexible employment: pay for pension and medical insurance yourself where you work, and household registration limits have been lifted

  Not working for an employer doesn't mean social insurance is out of the picture; it's just that no one pays the other half for you. The document requires every place to lift the household registration (户籍) limits on flexible workers (灵活就业人员) joining insurance where they work, and a few very large cities may lift them gradually. So don't take “freedom” to mean you can ignore social insurance. If you stop paying, your pension and medical reimbursement will be calculated under the rules for interrupted contributions.

• 🛵Delivery riders, ride-hailing drivers and local freight drivers have the platform pay an occupational injury protection fee per order; you don't pay it yourself

  For food delivery riders, ride-hailing drivers and local freight drivers, the platform pays the occupational injury protection fee (职业伤害保障费) for each order, and you pay nothing yourself: each order you take is covered for that order. This is still a pilot, so before you take orders, check whether your province and platform are included. If you already have an employment relationship with the platform, you go through work-injury insurance (工伤保险) instead of this scheme.

• 🎓Two paths that lock in a staffing post on the day you fill out the college application: publicly funded normal students and targeted medical students, at the cost of 6 years of service

  In both paths the state pays up front, and after graduation you work for 6 years at a designated place under the agreement. Publicly funded normal students (公费师范生) are recruited only at six teacher-training universities directly under the Ministry of Education (教育部), in the early admission batch. Targeted medical students (定向医学生) must sign a three-party agreement before they receive the admission notice. If you break the agreement, you have to repay the money and pay a penalty, and it goes into your credit record. Be sure you can accept the 6 years before you fill out the application.

• 🌐Before going abroad for work, check whether the company holds a license for overseas labor cooperation: it may not take a deposit from you

  On working abroad, the law regulates not you but the company that arranges your trip. Only an enterprise that has obtained a certificate of qualification for overseas labor cooperation (对外劳务合作经营资格证书) and has registered can do this. If you hear “go on a tourist visa first and switch to a work visa later,” that sentence itself shows the other side is breaking the law. A company also may not take a deposit from you under any name, or ask you to put up property as a guarantee.

• 💻If you work from home for an overseas company, this money counts as domestic income under tax law: report the income tax yourself, and have the money remitted as “employee compensation”

  Whether this money counts as domestic or foreign depends on where you do the work, not where the money is sent from. If you are in China working remotely for an overseas company, it counts as domestic income, and income tax is due in China. If the overseas company has no office in China, no one withholds the tax for you, and you have to report it yourself. The money is remitted in under “employee compensation” (职工报酬).

• 🏦If you work for yourself, look first at the entrepreneurship guarantee loan for start-up money: up to CNY 300,000 (30万元) for an individual, with half the interest paid by the government

  If you must borrow to get started, look first at this loan, which has an interest subsidy from the government. An individual can borrow up to CNY 300,000 (30万元) for up to 3 years, and the government pays half of the interest for you. One hard condition is often overlooked: when you apply, neither you nor your spouse may have other loans, and the only ones that don't count are student loans, small loans for people lifted out of poverty (脱贫人口小额信贷), mortgages, car loans, and small consumer loans under CNY 50,000 (5万元).