Employer of Record (EOR) and Payroll

Hiring in a new jurisdiction usually forces a sequencing problem: the entity is not ready, but the people are. An employer-of-record arrangement resolves it by placing your hires on a compliant local employment footing immediately, while your own structure catches up — or permanently, where headcount stays small.

In mainland China, acting as the legal employer of someone else's staff is a licensed activity, reserved to providers holding a labour dispatch licence. HainanInc does not hold one and does not act as your employees' employer. What we do is select and manage the licensed provider, negotiate the terms, and own the client-facing side of the arrangement so you deal with one team rather than a dispatch company you have no relationship with.

That licensing regime also carries scope limits — Chinese law restricts which roles may be filled through dispatch and caps dispatched headcount against a hirer's own workforce. Those limits are set by statute and applied by the licensed provider, not by us, and they are worth testing against your actual hiring plan early. We scope that in the assessment rather than discovering it at offer stage, and where the plan doesn't fit dispatch we will say so and point at entity formation instead.

Payroll is unforgiving of improvisation. Withholding, social insurance, and housing fund obligations each run on their own bases and deadlines, and errors surface months later as penalties rather than immediately as warnings. We coordinate these obligations against a fixed monthly calendar with documented reconciliation, and check the provider's output rather than forwarding it unread.

As your presence matures, the arrangement converts: employees move from the dispatch provider to direct employment under your own entity, with continuity of service and benefits, and the payroll infrastructure moves with them.