Documentation risk rising overseas

A hiring shortcut that looked harmless last year can now fail on paperwork alone in two very different places: China’s courts are asking for dispute-ready labor records, and Georgia’s immigration system is asking for document-heavy proof on work residence applications. (china-briefing.com) (georgiatoday.ge) In China, the shift came from the Supreme People’s Court, which issued Judicial Interpretation II in August 2025 and made it effective on September 1, 2025. The guidance tells lower courts how to decide recurring labor fights over open-term contracts, co-employment, non-competes, and social insurance. (china-briefing.com) (dahuilawyers.com) That sounds abstract until you see what changed in practice. China Briefing says employers are being judged less by what sits in a policy binder and more by whether daily records can prove what actually happened at the job site. (china-briefing.com) One example is the open-term contract rule, which is China’s version of “you cannot keep this worker on rolling temporary paper forever.” The new interpretation says courts should count contract extensions totaling at least one year, pre-agreed automatic extensions, and some entity swaps inside a group as part of the two-contract trigger once the renewed term ends. (china-briefing.com) Another example is co-employment, where a company tries to split the formal employer from the business that actually manages the worker. The court guidance tells judges to look for the “real employer,” so internal charts, payroll flows, supervision records, and site-level management evidence now carry more weight. (china-briefing.com) The same interpretation also gave employers some room on a different problem: unsigned labor contracts. DaHui Lawyers says the court clarified that double-wage liability is no longer automatic if the missing contract happened because of the worker’s intentional acts or gross negligence, which means the facts behind the missing signature now matter line by line. (dahuilawyers.com) Georgia is tightening from the immigration side instead of the courtroom side. On April 8, 2026, Georgia Today reported that the government amended the residence-permit decree to spell out income tests, turnover thresholds, and document lists for foreigners seeking work residence. (georgiatoday.ge) A foreigner applying for a work residence in Georgia must now provide a unique code from the employment agency and show income of at least five times the subsistence minimum. If officials ask for it, the applicant must also prove funds in a bank account. (georgiatoday.ge) The employer has to clear its own numbers too. Georgia set minimum turnover at 50,000 Georgian lari per foreign worker per year, or 35,000 Georgian lari in the education and medical sectors, and companies outside the value-added tax system must prove turnover with official documents. (georgiatoday.ge) Georgia’s April update sits on top of a broader immigration overhaul approved in June 2025 and phased in from September 2025 through March 2026. KPMG described that package as a move toward a more compliance-oriented system with new work-authorization rules, new definitions for labor immigrants and self-employed foreigners, and fines for non-compliance. (kpmg.com) The new Georgia rules also carved out a special lane for information technology workers, but even that lane is document-heavy. Georgia Today says an information technology applicant needs at least two years of sector experience, at least 25,000 United States dollars of income in the past year, and income confirmation twice with a 30-day gap. (georgiatoday.ge) Put the two countries together and the pattern is simple: China is asking, “Can you prove how you managed this worker after the dispute starts,” while Georgia is asking, “Can you prove the worker and employer qualify before the permit is granted.” In both systems, missing records now look less like a clerical error and more like the whole case. (china-briefing.com) (georgiatoday.ge)