If you’ve been in China a few years one thing you need to be careful about is the five year rule for tax. Basically after five full years in China you’ll start to be taxed on any earnings abroad (leasing out your old apartment in the UK, interest, dividends, capital gains etc), there are ways around it though. I got clarification from my financial advisor. here’s the situation:

If a foreign national has stayed in China for five full years consecutively you’ll be subject to pay tax on your worldwide income from the sixth year onwards.

A “full year” is defined as a year where the individual has lived on mainland China and has not left mainland China for either 30 days consecutively or 90 days cumulatively. Note, the day of arrival and departure from China are counted as days in China (i.e. if you fly to Korea on Monday morning, first thing and return on the Wednesday very late, that still only counts as one day outside China), so if you’re like me and you make a lot of short business trips to other countries they’re not worth anywhere near as much as you’d think.

Here’s the bitch, once you’ve been in China for five full consecutive years then you pay tax on your worldwide earnings, you can’t break this until you basically spend a full year outside China (less than 90 days on the mainland in a calendar year) at which the five year count starts again.

So, if you’re going to be here for a long time make sure that within the five years you’re either spending 90 full days outside China or one long trip of 30 full days outside China to reset your five year count!