Working with a freelancer in China, day to day

The first-week working agreement

Copy the card into your first message and fill in the last column together. The Chinese column is there so you can send it as it is.

Example. A Monday in January. A buyer in Lyon sends a long brief at 18:00, when it is already 01:00 on Tuesday in Chengdu. The freelancer reads it at 09:00 in Chengdu, 02:00 in Lyon, has three questions and sends them. Lyon is asleep. The buyer answers at 09:00 Lyon time, which is 16:00 in Chengdu, and the freelancer’s first working day is gone. Six lines agreed on the Monday would have saved it.

Filling in the six rows

The channel is one place for the work and one place where decisions are written down. They can be the same. What matters is that both of you can find every decision later, without relying on a call one of you half remembers.

The reply window says when each side answers. Something like “the freelancer answers between 15:00 and 18:00 China time, the buyer before 10:00 Lyon time” is enough. It sets no working hours for the freelancer, and it shouldn’t.

The language of record is the version that counts when a message can be read two ways. For most jobs with a buyer abroad it is English. If the freelancer prepares a document a Chinese supplier will sign, that document may need its Chinese version to prevail, and the card is the place to say so.

The files row names one shared folder that both of you can open, and says whether source files come with each delivery or only at the end.

The acceptance row names the person who reviews, points to the criteria in the brief and gives the number of days you have to answer. The changes row says that any change is asked for in writing, then priced and dated before work on it starts.

None of this is new if you have read the earlier chapters. You found the freelancer in chapter 1, tested them in chapter 2, signed in chapter 3 and agreed how they are paid in chapter 4. The card is how those decisions get used week to week.

Instructions that survive translation

Across a language gap, the shape of a request matters as much as the words in it. Compare these two.

Example, before:

“Could you take another pass at the packaging mock-ups so they really pop on the shelf, and maybe tone down the back panel a bit before we circle back next week?”

Example, after:

1. Open the three box files in the shared folder.
2. On the front of each box, make the logo 20% larger and use the red in the attached photo for the background.
3. On the back panel, keep only the three lines of text marked on the attached screenshot.
4. Send the new files by 2027-01-15, 18:00 China time.

The first is a normal sentence between colleagues at home. Count what’s in it: two requests folded into one sentence, four idioms and “next week” where a date should be. The second can be checked line by line, by both sides.

The brief was your first instruction, and how to write a brief a freelancer in China can bid on shows its structure. Every message after it should follow the same five rules:

• One request per message, or one numbered list per message.
• Dates and times written out in ISO format (2027-01-15, 18:00), with the time zone.
• Screenshots marked up, not described.
• No idioms, no jokes that depend on wordplay, no “ASAP.”
• Before work starts, ask for the plan back in their words.

The last rule is the easiest to skip and the cheapest to keep. If the plan that comes back isn’t the one you meant, you find out before anyone has worked a day on it.

If what you need is someone to carry messages in Chinese for you, with suppliers or couriers, that is a job of its own: a Chinese-speaking assistant in China covers it.

Feedback and acceptance

Once the first delivery arrives, the acceptance row on the card starts doing its job. Review each milestone against the criteria in the brief and the accepted bid, one line per criterion. If the bid split the work into milestones you can check, as reading a bid recommends, you can copy the criteria straight from it.

Example, written for this page.

On ChinaTalentDesk, you review each deliverable against its criteria and approve it. The freelancer is paid, and your invoices and documents stay in one place. You fund one milestone at a time, so the next one starts only when you are ready.

A change request is new scope, such as a fourth box or a second language on the back panel. It gets its own price and its own date, agreed before the work. A fix is different. If a delivery misses a criterion that was in the brief, as the source files did above, asking for it is not a change, and it should not cost more.

Feedback deserves the same care. Send it in one message per round, numbered, each point tied to a criterion or to a line in the brief. Say what to keep as well as what to change, because a freelancer who hears only the problems may redo the parts you liked. And reply within the days you agreed on the card: a milestone that waits a week for review stalls the next one.

If a delivery is late, or the freelancer goes quiet, start with one written message that names the milestone, the date agreed and the date you now need. The cause is often ordinary, a supplier who didn’t answer or a sick day, and a short message inside the reply window tends to bring it out. If the milestone is still missing after the new date, you have funded that milestone and no more, which is what milestone billing is for. ChinaTalentDesk offers no replacement guarantee; if a hire isn’t working out, the desk can run an emergency search for a fee, as Pricing explains.

Time zones and the calendar

Start with time. All of mainland China runs on one clock, eight hours ahead of UTC, with no daylight saving. If your clocks change for summer, the gap with China changes with them, twice a year. Agree one or two hours a day when both of you answer messages, and let everything else move in writing. Working across time zones with a freelancer in China has the rest.

Then the calendar, where the date to plan around is the Spring Festival.

• Friday, February 5, 2027: New Year’s Eve, the last day of the twelfth lunar month.
• Saturday, February 6, 2027: Chinese New Year.
• Saturday, February 20, 2027: Lantern Festival, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month.
• February 6, 8 and 9, 2027: general holidays in Hong Kong, according to the Hong Kong government. They matter if a bank, a forwarder or an office in your job sits there.

The mainland’s days off, and the weekend days worked to make up for them, are set each year by a State Council notice. On October 18, 2026, the 2027 notice had not been published. The 2026 notice came out on November 4, 2025, and the 2025 notice on November 12, 2024. Until the 2027 one is out, plan around the lunar dates and leave room on both sides of them. Chinese New Year 2027 covers the festival in more detail.

Put the last milestone before the break and the first one after it into the plan now. Then ask your freelancer which days they will be away. Freelancers set their own holidays, so ask rather than assume.

Tools a freelancer in China can open

Your team chose its everyday software without a freelancer in mainland China in mind, and some of it may not load there without a VPN. Pick tools both sides can open, and on day one, have the freelancer open every link you send from their side, starting with the shared folder and the call link. If one doesn’t load, change it then, not on the morning of a deadline. Which work tools open in China goes through the common ones, with the date each was tested.

Run a project, not a job

A freelancer is not a remote employee, and the day-to-day habits you choose decide which one the arrangement looks like. Nobody sets out to manage a freelancer like staff. It usually creeps in through a recurring calendar invite.

China’s 2005 notice on labor relations sets three tests for employment without a written contract. The second is the one daily habits touch.

The same notice lists attendance records among the evidence of a labor relationship. Daily stand-ups, timesheets and screen monitoring could push a project toward that line, whatever the contract says. If you are unsure where your arrangement sits, the employee-or-freelancer check asks the questions, and contractor or employee sets out the rule.

Sharing files and data

Last, three habits for anything you send or receive.

• Send only what the task needs. A designer working on a box does not need your customer list.
• Personal information has rules. If the work involves personal information of people in China, and it comes to you abroad, China’s Personal Information Protection Law requires the people concerned to be told who receives it and to give separate consent (article 39).
• Delivered files are not ownership. Under China’s Copyright Law, a commissioned work belongs to its maker unless a contract says otherwise, and a transfer of the economic rights needs a written contract. Who owns commissioned work explains the rule, and the freelance services agreement has the clause.

This is the last chapter of the handbook. The overview puts all five problems on one page, and How it works shows how ChinaTalentDesk handles each step, from the brief to the last approved milestone. If your next job is in a new field, the talent categories list what is vetted in each.

Start the next job with the working agreement already in the brief. Start a brief.