this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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The big issue with immigrating directly to China is that you will only be allowed to stay in their higher tier cities afaik, this is because of the Hukou system which treats every region of China like its own country with visa restrictions, essentially. Its great for preserving cultures but not so great if you like to travel a lot. So its unlikely that you could take advantage of the collective lands rules as a foreigner unless you married into a family in an area with collective lands. You can obviously visit any region of China but visas/hukou do have limits if you try to go for residency.
There are some loopholes to getting Chinese citizenship, you can move to for example Taiwan or Hong Kong, get residency / citizenship in those places, and then the mainland would consider you a citizen by proxy. But usually if you're moving from one region to another you can only live in the higher tier cities. You can read a little more about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou
Possibly but that wasn't the intent of the Hukou system. It's goal was the prevention of massive slums forming on the borders of the majority cities during rapid modernisation (which in turn leads to rapid urbanisation). There is currently massive hukou reform ongoing such as restrictions effectively being lifted for cities under 3 million population.
Thanks a lot! This is invaluable to know and look into before I ever begin to seriously considering uprooting my life. I wouldn't mind going through the paces to attain a life I find desirable, but it depends on how prohibitive things are if the time comes to make decisions like this.
Also are you in USA? Afaik there are new rules for Canada that are more lenient
Yep, USA. Part of my potential plans were to go to Canada first, though, for their better relationship with other countries!