Actually I have already been here for a year and it is a fine school. They give us a choice on how much we want in RMB and how much we want to send to Canada each month in a cheque. They had some problems with the government concerning money flowing out of the country but it is all fixed and I discovered today that they will be offering direct deposit to a bank in Canada for next year.

I was looking more into sending money to a bank in the UK and not Canada and I doubt that they would offer that option. Maybe in the future but since it is a new school, they are not ready for that leap just yet.

Thanks for the concern though.

Thanks. That is exactly what I was looking for. I will contact them next term in Shanghai and see what they can do. Appreciate the help.

Can I , as a Canadian, open an account with ANZ? Also, when I contacted some Canadian banks in China, they told me that they were not affiliated with their Canadian branches and I could not transfer funds other than by wire transfer. When you say cheaply, do you mean that their wire transfer funds are cheap or that you could send your money out of the country cheaply by direct transfer via the internet? There is bank in Canada that has free transfers from their bank to different banks, but it only works in Canada, which is too bad.

Also, I do not live in Shanghai but am about 1.5 hours from the city, in Jiangsu Province.

I have not looked at the possibility of opening an account at a western Bank in Shanghai and then using their wire transfer functions. Interesting.

What I was told was that in China, wire transfer fees are not a fixed amount but a percentage, and this percentage is quite high. This makes it very expensive to do a wire transfer. I need to find a method in China where I can transfer money for a fixed fee, not a percentage.

The Hong Kong brokerage might be interesting. Any idea on the name? My only concern is the Scotttrade is in the US and I would prefer a different country, but a brokerage that has access to Canadian exchanges. I found one called Eurotrade, based in Gibraltar, but I don't know much about them.
You are right about Internaax though. Too expensive.

I checked their web site and it was buried but yes, I can open an account over here with no tax-withholding except for dividends. Not bad.

Their main web page is not great though. I had to do a Google search to find their international information and I still can't find what exchanges they have access to. Can you trade on the TSE and Vancouver exchanges?

Did you look at any other brokerages beside Scotttrade? If you had not have mentioned the international part, I never would have found out about it, since they don't exactly advertise this fact. Do you know of any other brokerages that offer international accounts?

Did you have to be in the States to get an account at Scotttrade? Did you look at any other American brokerages?

Just found this forum and it looks interesting so I thought I would jump in with a question.

I am a Canadian working in China for the first time and just finishing up the year. I currently have a brokerage account at TradeFreedom but would like to find another brokerage since I plan on being a non-resident. Does anyone have any suggestions as to a good online brokerage? I have looked at Internaax but at 30 euros a trade, it is too steep for me. Thales in Panama is interesting but again, too expensive. If I get an American brokerage account, will they let me if I am Canadian and have no American bank accounts? What about the UK or Hong Kong?

Also, I currently get paid in cash over here, deposited to an account at the Bank of China. I would like to find a cheap way to get this money over to another western bank, preferably to my new account at Lloyds in the Channel Islands. So far, the only ways I have found are wire transfers, which cost a fortune, or Western Union, but it only can go to an individual. Any suggestions?