What social insurance takes from a foreign employee in China

A foreign employee on a Chinese payroll is enrolled in the same five social insurance schemes as Chinese staff: pension, medical, work injury, unemployment and maternity. The rule that says so is a 2011 ministry measure, revised once at the end of 2024, and the revision changed the paperwork rather than the obligation (Order No. 54, 23 December 2024).

The money is split unevenly. Your pension contribution of 8% is credited to an account in your name. Your employer’s 16% goes into a pooled fund that pays today’s retirees. Leave before pension age and only the 8% can be paid out.

Five schemes are one obligation, not five choices

All five schemes are mandatory for a foreign employee on a Chinese payroll. Article 3 of the 2011 measure names the seconded case separately: a foreigner hired abroad but posted to a Chinese branch or representative office is enrolled by the Chinese entity, not by the overseas employer (consolidated text, as amended 23 December 2024).

Who counts is defined in article 2 of the same text: a non-Chinese national holding a foreigner work permit, a foreign resident correspondent card or similar employment document, plus a residence permit — or holding a permanent residence card.

Registration is due within 30 days of the employment document, and the same 30-day clock appears in article 58 of the Social Insurance Law for the hiring itself (Social Insurance Law, in force 1 July 2011). The number you are given is built from a three-letter country code plus your passport number, so a German passport produces a number beginning DEU (annex to the measure).

The 16% and the 8% land in different places

The employer’s pension contribution is pooled; the employee’s is credited to an account in their name. Article 12 of the Social Insurance Law makes that division, and a 2005 State Council decision fixed the account at 8% of the contribution wage, “formed entirely from the individual’s own contributions, with the employer’s contribution no longer credited to the account” (国发〔2005〕38号, effective 1 January 2006).

Medical insurance follows the same direction. Since the 2021 outpatient reform, the personal account receives only the employee’s 2%, and the employer’s medical contribution goes entirely to the pooled fund (国办发〔2021〕14号, April 2021).

The pension split, at a monthly contribution base of 15,000 CNY:

Two thirds of every pension contribution is therefore not yours in any form. Per 1,000 CNY of monthly base the split is 80 and 160.

Leaving early returns the smaller half

A foreigner who leaves before pension age can take the personal account, not the pooled part. Article 5 of the 2011 measure says the account is kept, and the person can either draw on it after returning to work in China — years accumulate — or apply in writing to terminate the social insurance relationship and take the balance as a single payment.

The pooled part is not refundable. The implementation notice for the Canada agreement states it in as many words: contributions already made inside the exempt period create no obligation for the Chinese side to return them (中加 notice, 2017). If the employee dies, article 6 makes the account balance inheritable.

The pension floor is 15 years until 2030, then 20

A monthly pension needs 15 years of contributions until 2029, and 20 years from 2039. Article 16 of the Social Insurance Law grants it after 15 accumulated years at statutory retirement age, and offers two exits for anyone short of the number: keep paying until 15, or transfer into the urban and rural residents’ pension.

The 15 is already scheduled to move. A Standing Committee decision of 13 September 2024 raises the minimum contribution period from 15 to 20 years beginning 1 January 2030, by six months a year: 15.5 years in 2030, 16 in 2031, and 20 from 2039 (NPC decision, effective 1 January 2025).

The same decision moves the retirement age itself, starting 1 January 2025: one month later for every four months of calendar time, taking men from 60 to 63 and women from 55 to 58, while women retiring at 50 move one month for every two months, to 55. Both tracks arrive in 2039.

Ten agreements exempt part of the bill

Eleven bilateral agreements are in force, and each exempts part of the pension contribution. China has signed 13 in total: the eleven in force are Germany, Korea, Denmark, Finland, Canada, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Spain, Luxembourg, Japan and Serbia, while France has signed but not brought its agreement into force (人社厅发〔2025〕27号, 15 September 2025). Kyrgyzstan’s implementing notice is dated 13 October 2025.

What each agreement exempts, from the ministry’s own implementation notices:

The exemption is written for categories, not for individuals: posted employees, seafarers, aircrew, diplomats and civil servants, self-employed people moving with their work. A French or Dutch national hired locally by a Chinese company is not a posted employee and gets nothing from the agreement.

The certificate is the whole exemption

A certificate of coverage from the home country is what triggers any exemption. The employee submits it to the social insurance agency where they are enrolled; the agency checks the original, keeps a copy and exempts contributions for the period printed on it (中日 notice, 27 August 2019).

Without the certificate there is no exemption, and the agency is told to press for enrolment. Two agreements add a six-month window: a certificate filed within six months of starting work exempts from the start, and one filed later exempts from the following month (Netherlands, Denmark).

Denmark also shows the two directions are not symmetric. A Danish employee posted to China gets at most 3 years; a Chinese employee posted to Denmark gets 5, extendable by another 60 months (中丹 notice, 2014).

Medical, work injury and maternity stay payable

Every implementation notice adds the same line: all other schemes still apply. Apart from the schemes named in the agreement, the foreign employee joins the rest under the Social Insurance Law and the 2011 measure. Japan’s notice puts it plainly — pension is exempt, the rest is not.

So the treaties address double pension contributions. They do not reduce the 2% medical deduction, the employer’s medical contribution, work injury cover or maternity cover, and they do not touch the personal income tax position of the salary itself.

The December 2024 amendment changed the paperwork

Order No. 54 replaced the old employment-permit wording with the foreigner work permit, and rewrote the annual survival check for people drawing a Chinese pension from abroad so that a notarised or apostilled document from the country of residence is accepted, following China’s accession to the Apostille Convention (Order No. 54, effective on publication, 23 December 2024).

Nothing in the amendment changes who is covered, the five schemes, the 30-day registration or the refund rule.

How I checked

I read the consolidated 2011 measure together with the amending decision, so the article numbers match the text now in force, and I read the Social Insurance Law from the State Council’s own copy rather than a law database.

The rates come from the instrument that sets each one: the 2005 decision for the 8% account, the 2019 State Council circular for the 16% employer rate and the definition of the averaging wage used to set contribution floors and ceilings (国办发〔2019〕13号, 1 April 2019), the 1998 medical decision for the 6% and 2% (国发〔1998〕44号, 14 December 1998), the 2021 reform for the medical account split, and the 2015 work injury notice for the eight industry classes (人社部发〔2015〕71号, 1 October 2015).

The agreement table was built from ten implementation notices published in the ministry’s foreign-worker column, one row per notice, with the exempt schemes copied from the 互免险种范围 paragraph and the cap from the 期限 paragraph. The arithmetic in the tables is reproduced by a short script, social-insurance-split.py, which asserts the 16/8 split, the two-thirds ratio and the 2030–2039 minimum-year series.

What I could not check

• Germany and Korea are in force but their implementation notices are not in the ministry column I read; I left them out of the table rather than fill two rows from a secondary copy.
• Kyrgyzstan’s notice is dated 13 October 2025 and says it applies from entry into force; I did not find the entry-into-force date on a government page, so the table gives the notice date only.
• Provincial floors and ceilings for 2026: each province publishes its own band each year, and I did not read 31 of them. The tables therefore use a hypothetical base, not a real one.
• Interest credited to personal accounts: the rate is announced annually and I did not verify how it is applied to a foreigner who leaves mid-year.
• Whether a foreigner without a household registration can use the “transfer into the residents’ pension” branch of article 16. The law offers it; the practical landing point is unclear to me.
• The pension amount itself. The benefit formula uses provincial average wages and individual contribution indices, and I did not attempt a worked example.
• Enforcement. Article 11 of the measure refers unpaid cases to the Social Insurance Law, whose article 86 sets a 0.05% daily late fee plus a fine of one to three times the unpaid amount, but I have no data on how often that is applied to foreign staff.