Services agreement checklist for a freelancer in China

The checklist: 20 clauses in five parts

Edition October 2026. Not legal advice. A checklist to review a draft with your own lawyer. Every article cited was read at its official source on October 18, 2026.

Download it as Markdown or plain text. Both files carry the same clauses and the law table as this page.

Part A. Who and what

• Parties. The freelancer’s full legal name as it appears on their official documents, their address, and the exact entity that signs for you. Leave out the freelancer’s identity card number: you don’t need it to name them, and the copy you store abroad is safer without it. Why: a Chinese court only takes a claim against a clearly identified defendant, so a nickname or a chat handle won’t do. Law: Civil Procedure Law art. 122 (a claim needs a definite defendant) and art. 124 (the complaint gives the defendant’s name and address).
• Scope and deliverables. Each deliverable named, with its format and the test it has to pass to be accepted. Why: a defined result that the freelancer organizes is what makes this a services contract rather than a job. Law: the 2005 labor-relationship notice, test 2, which asks whether the person works under your management doing paid work you arrange. How to write a brief a freelancer in China can bid on shows how to set out the scope.
• Milestones and acceptance. A date, a fee and a review window for each milestone, and a line saying that silence after the window counts as acceptance. Why: it limits what is at stake at once and stops finished work sitting unapproved. Law: general contract law; no single article.
• Independence. The freelancer sets their own hours, place and tools, may work for other clients, isn’t bound by your staff rules or attendance and holds no title in your organization. Why: these are the facts China’s labor test looks at when it decides whether a relationship is employment. Law: the 2005 notice (all three tests, and the evidence it lists, from pay records to attendance); the 2021 guidance, which puts self-directed freelance work under civil law. Contractor or employee in China explains the tests, and the employee-or-freelancer check runs them on your case.

Part B. Money

• Fee, currency and invoice. The amount for each milestone, the currency and who invoices whom. Why: the money meets limits on the freelancer’s side, and the currency decides which ones. Law: State Administration of Foreign Exchange rules: each person can convert USD 50,000 a year with just an ID, and more with proof of the transaction; an inbound transfer of USD 3,000 or more needs a balance-of-payments declaration first. What freelancers in China cost helps you set the fee.
• Payment route and purpose. The route named (a bank wire, a licensed remitter to Alipay or UnionPay, or a payer in China in RMB) and the payment described as what it is: a fee for services. Why: a payment labeled as something it isn’t, or split to stay under a limit, breaks the rules of the route. Law: Measures for the Administration of Individual Foreign Exchange, art. 7 (no splitting to evade limits, no false commercial documents). On one remitter’s published terms, a business paying an individual in CNY uses UnionPay or Alipay, not a plain bank transfer; its Alipay route takes business payments only as “Salary” or “Services,” at most 50,000 CNY per transfer; and a person can receive at most 300,000 CNY a year for services, counting every provider.
• Tax. A line on who declares the freelancer’s income. Why: Chinese law makes the payer the withholding agent, but a foreign payer with no Chinese tax registration normally can’t withhold, so in practice the freelancer usually declares the income themselves. Law: Individual Income Tax Law art. 9 (the payer withholds) and art. 13 (with no withholding agent, the taxpayer files by the 15th of the following month); Implementing Regulations art. 3 (pay for services performed in China is China-source income, wherever it is paid).
• Expenses. Which costs you reimburse, against which receipts, and the cap. Why: a trip or a courier fee agreed in a chat is the first thing argued about later. Law: general contract law; no single article.

Part C. The work you are paying for

If you only have time for one part, make it this one.

• Assignment of copyright. A written assignment of the economic rights in each deliverable, taking effect when the milestone is paid. List the rights in Copyright Law art. 10, items 5 to 17: reproduction, distribution, rental, exhibition, performance, screening, broadcasting, online dissemination, filming, adaptation, translation, compilation and the rest. Name the work, the rights, the territory, the price and when and how it is paid. Why: without a written assignment the freelancer owns the copyright in what you paid for, and any right the contract doesn’t name stays with them. Law: Copyright Law art. 19 (a commissioned work belongs to its maker unless the contract says otherwise), art. 27 (a transfer needs a written contract, and lists its contents) and art. 29 (rights not expressly transferred can’t be used without consent). Who owns commissioned work in China goes through the rule.
• Moral rights. How attribution and integrity will be handled: for example, the freelancer agrees not to be named and consents to your edits. Why: the rights to publish, to be named, to revise and to keep the work intact are not on the list of rights that can be transferred. Law: Copyright Law art. 10, items 1 to 4 and paragraph 3.
• Inventions. If the work could produce an invention, who holds the right to apply for a patent, and the freelancer’s duty to sign the assignment and help register it with CNIPA, China’s patent office. Why: the inventor holds that right unless the contract says otherwise, and a transfer only takes effect once it is registered. Law: Patent Law art. 8 (commissioned inventions) and art. 10 (written contract, CNIPA registration, effect from registration, further formalities for a transfer to a foreign party).
• Pre-existing material. The freelancer’s own tools, code libraries, fonts or templates used in the work, listed, with a license to you rather than an assignment. Why: you need to use them inside the deliverable, and they need to keep using them for other clients. Law: Copyright Law art. 10, paragraph 2 (an owner may license the rights in items 5 to 17).
• Source files and handover. Which files come with each milestone (source code, layered design files, editable documents) and where they are delivered. Why: owning the rights in a design is of little use without the files to change it. Law: general contract law; no single article.
• Confidentiality. What counts as confidential, how long the duty lasts after the project ends, and how your material is returned or deleted. Why: the project ends, but your files stay on the freelancer’s laptop unless the contract says what happens to them. Law: general contract law; no single article.

Part D. People’s data

• Personal data. If the freelancer handles personal information about people in China for you (customer lists, survey answers, user tests), or you receive theirs: the purpose, the kinds of data and who receives them abroad, with separate consent where the law asks for it. Why: sending personal information out of China has its own conditions, and the exemptions don’t remove all of them. Law: Personal Information Protection Law art. 13 (lawful grounds), art. 38 (conditions for a transfer abroad) and art. 39 (notice and separate consent); CAC Order 16 art. 5 (when the filings are not needed) and art. 10 (notice, separate consent and an impact assessment still apply).

Part E. When things go wrong

• Language of the contract. Both languages, with one clause naming the version that prevails. Why: if a dispute reaches a Chinese court, the case runs in Chinese, and any translation is at your cost. Law: Civil Procedure Law art. 273. The rules on translations for courts and authorities have their own page.
• Governing law and disputes. The law chosen and the forum: a named court, or arbitration. Why: a contract claim against a person in China is heard where they live or where the contract is performed, a foreign judgment needs recognition in China under a treaty or reciprocity, and your litigation lawyer in a Chinese court must be a PRC lawyer. Law: Civil Procedure Law arts. 22 and 24 (where to sue), 274 (a PRC lawyer), 277 (a written choice of a Chinese court), 288 (a written arbitration clause keeps a foreign-related trade dispute out of court), 298 and 299 (foreign judgments) and 304 (foreign arbitral awards); Supreme People’s Court Guiding Case 235 (February 2026), in which a Shanghai court recognized English judgments on the ground of reciprocity.
• Termination and handover. The notice period, payment for work accepted to date and the handover of work in progress. Why: a project that stops halfway should leave you with what you paid for. Law: general contract law; no single article.
• Subcontracting. Whether the freelancer may hand any part of the work to someone else, and only with your written consent. Why: a subcontractor holds your files, and what they make is theirs unless a written contract passes it on. Law: Copyright Law art. 19, which applies to the subcontractor’s work too.
• Signatures. Each party’s name, the date and the signing method agreed: ink, a signed scan or an electronic signature. Why: in a dispute you’ll need to show who signed, and when. Law: general contract law; no single article.

ChinaTalentDesk editorial team. Edition October 2026. Not legal advice. https://www.chinatalentdesk.com/en/templates/freelance-services-agreement

How to use it

A services agreement with a freelancer in China should do four things a generic template often misses. Assign the economic rights in the work in writing, because Chinese copyright law gives commissioned work to the freelancer by default. Describe project work, not a job. Say which language prevails. And plan the dispute route around where the freelancer is.

Start with whatever draft you have. That might be your company’s usual contractor agreement, or something the freelancer sent over. (If it came in Chinese only, get it translated before you tick a single box.) Read it against the sheet and tick each clause it covers. An empty box is a question to put to the draft. The sheet lists what to cover; the wording is yours, or your lawyer’s.

Then send the sheet to your lawyer with the draft. The table under the sheet links the official text of each law, article by article, with the date we last read it. That way counsel reads the source, not our summary of it. If one of these laws changes, the sheet gets a new edition and a new date.

When a home-country template meets China, three clauses tend to break.

Copyright comes first. Many templates assume the client owns what it pays for, or lean on a work-for-hire rule from home. Chinese law starts from the other end: a commissioned work belongs to the freelancer unless a written contract assigns it. The assignment in Part C is where to start.

Language is the second. An English-only contract may be one the freelancer can’t fully read. And if it ever reached a Chinese court, the judge would be working from a translation. Write it in both languages and add a line saying which one wins.

The third is the disputes clause. One that sends every dispute to your home courts feels safe. But the freelancer lives in China, and so does their money. A foreign judgment has to be recognized by a Chinese court before it counts there. Ask your lawyer where a claim would really be heard before you choose.

The handbook’s chapter on contracts explains what to put in writing and why. Before you sign, check the freelancer; once you have, the chapter on paying in RMB picks up the money side. For the whole process, start at How to hire a freelancer in China without speaking Chinese.

When you hire through ChinaTalentDesk, you sign one contract, and every contract assigns the intellectual property in the deliverables to you. How it works sets out the steps. If you haven’t chosen the work yet, start from the categories.

The law behind each clause

This table is mainly for your lawyer. Skip it if the list is all you need.

In the statute’s words

Part C rests on article 19 of the Copyright Law. Here it is in the original, with our English beside it.

Post the job, and the contract comes with the hire. Start a brief.