Setting up an office in Shanghai from an established EU Co

It all depends on the specific industry you are in, but in most cases you can establish a representative office or WFOE on your own. If you are in a sensitive or protected industry, yes you will need a partner.

What is a WFOE? Sorry I am a bit naive about this! Can the representative office operate and hire locals and bring in staff from the euro company to work in shanghai? They are a consuting company.

wfoe = wholly foreign-owned enterprise. wofe = same. r/o = representative office. There's a lot of restrictions on all businesses here. Much of the information is available online. The small gotchas are not but get closer to knowing what you want and people can narrow down the pitfalls. "Consulting company" is rather broad. Consulting on civil engineering is different from consulting on advertising. There are different requirements for different types of businesses. The "scope of business" is restricted here much more than in the west. Look for information on "registered capital." Any wofe will be required to have registered capital. The amount will depend on the business you plan to be in. An r/o used to be fairly simple to create but nowadays they are making it much more difficult. They want them to go away so it's not as easy as in the past. The advantage was easier to set up, no registered capital. The disadvantages were that you could not directly do business, you were only acting for the home office. In some cases that is fine, in others not so much. An r/o cannot directly employ local people but has to go through FESCO. That sounds bad but n fact it can be good - you don't have to have an hr department, keep tabs on everything, do employee taxes, any of that. FESCO does everything and you just pay. You can actually find people you like then have them run all the paperwork through FESCO so you aren't stuck with people you don't like. As an r/o you can only have a few foreigners in the company - maybe now it's four ? But employing foreignrs as a wfoe is not free and easy either. If you are planing on opening either one then hiring a local receptionist but bringing in all your people from Europe, forget it. They won't let you. Sure, your home guys can come and hang out in the office on tourist visas but legal employees, no. Opening a company in Shanghai is not straightforward. I'd avoid the services as they only tell you the lovely parts until you've parted with your money. Then the less lovely portions appear out of the closet and they aren't concerned. You'd be amazed how generous, kind, considerate and capable Shanghai people are until they have your money. If you think at all times "How could they possibly make this more difficult ?" you'll be well on your way to understanding business in China. Hope that's some help, anyhow.

Thanks for the info. Its mostly banking consulting some energy companies. They are medium sized and do a lot of work for multinational companies based in europe. Its an idea to expand their market more and would be a small operation I think and could do the whole visitor visa for projects. I have a good relationship with the Chininese embassy here and with our consulate in Shanghai so I will starting asking questions from them as well. Thanks. Its not a I wanna open a shop or restaurant in the french concession thing :-)