China's visa squeeze is very real, according to reports we've been getting from various corners of the Beijing expat community. My colleague Mary Hennock's recent visit to Beijing's visa bureau suggests the pre-Games clean-up includes a shake-up inside the police bureaucracy:

The Chinese police have a new computer network that's got a few teething problems. You've probably been through similar misery; every IT upgrade risks a few weeks of lost data and puzzling glitches. My recent visit to Beijing's main visa office suggests its personnel are experiencing just this type of problem.

Having recently joined Newsweek's Beijing bureau, I went there to collect the precious J visa that allows foreigners to work as journalists. I took with me a carefully-assembled packet of documents - the Foreign Ministry's OK, a health certificate (stating I'm not suffering psychosis, syphilis or the plague) and my current residence permit.

As Newsweek International reported earlier this month, ["Beijing's Visa Crackdown" Feb 18], the police have toughened up on lax enforcement of China's visa rules as part of a wide-ranging pre-Olympic house-cleaning. They've cracked down on an army of shady visa agents who rely on corrupt deals with local police to procure visas for money. Strictly-speaking these visas are illegal, but they have been widely tolerated.

At a conservative guess, perhaps a quarter of the foreigners in Beijing have such grey-market visas. For many young Westerners in particular, these passport stamps are springboards into good jobs, and are held by interns in multinationals and in big law firms, as well as by language teachers and artists.

Visa agents say the tightening is because of the Olympics. The police first clamped down on dodgy one-year work visas (Z visas) last summer, exactly a year ahead of the Games. Next to vanish were one-year F visas for business visitors, a blurred category that suits part-time earners. Visa agents still supply 6-month F visas, but shorter stays are common. Beijing is awash with rumors about the clampdown – one version is that there'll be a wave of visa refusals ahead of the Olympics. An American movie production assistant told me she's "nervous" about renewing in June. "I wanted to get a year-long visa but from what I heard it was impossible", she said.

Restricting grey-market visa trading hurts corrupt cops. Now it's clear the police are taking other steps to tidy their own house. They've invested in technology to streamline their record-keeping, with mixed results.

In the visa office, a grumpy policewoman with a cough tapped in my data and said my residence permit was canceled: I might face a hefty fine. She swung her screen round to display the evidence. Although I was sitting in front of her, the records said I had left China. It was true that I'd spent a dismally chilly Christmas in Vietnam, but with a multi-entry visa, it shouldn't have been a problem. Clearly, I had returned to Beijing.

"How did this happen?" I wanted to know. It turns out the immigration police have a new national computerized network that picked up my departure for Vietnam, but not my return. It cancelled my residence permit and I was now guilty of failing to get a new one.

It's easy to talk about a monolithic security state, but I saw plenty of very human confusion as officers disagreed over the problem, and invented fixes for it. A senior officer acknowledged that I'd broken no laws. Things were just different now because of the new computerized system, though I couldn't have known it. Still, I must re-register.

The local police had another take again. "Actually, you don't need to re-register. The problem is with our computer,'" one said. In the end, they produced a new residence permit without troubling my busy landlord.

Despite the somewhat chaotic (and friendly) way my problem was solved, the police are making a concerted attempt to improve their grip on Beijing's footloose foreigners. I'd narrowly escaped being fined as an overstayer, something that appears to be happening to more people as validity periods get shorter. Even 6-month visas now often stipulate holders must leave China every two months. "People don't realise you have to leave the country", said an American who accidentally overstayed by two months and paid the maximum fine of RMB 5000 (or US$700). Diplomats say deportations are rising too as the squeeze on visa agents changes the ground-rules (if not the law, which the Chinese say they are simply enforcing).

Applicants from countries whose nationals cannot (legally) renew in China are more likely to be deported, as happened to six Indonesian students last September. Helping clients avoid expensive trips abroad is one of the most popular services visa agents provide, though some no doubt go further and sell false identities too. Police worries about prostitution apparently have driven up the price of visas for young Russian women who're frequently suspected of being sex workers. One visa agent said he charged Russian women almost RMB 7,000 (about US$970) for non-renewable three-month visas -- about twice the going rate for Russian male applicants. 

As I waited in the visa office queue, I got chatting to another applicant, a veteran foreigner in Beijing. He was having his own document problems which had forced him to visit the visa office six times in as many weeks. There were many new faces, and the familiar official who usually helped him cut through red tape had been moved to the airport, he said. Perhaps the police are moving officers around to discourage corruption?

At the top of the queue, one policewoman certainly seemed inexperienced and confused. "What do I do about this?" I heard her whisper to a colleague. Then she got tough, demanding to know who arranged my previous F visa. She and her colleagues may be raw, but they're being trained in the new realities too. The police seem to be on a professionalization drive to enforce the visa laws, and weed out corruption in their own ranks. Whether they succeed is another matter. Even if they do succeed in shutting down today's shady visa-sellers, the visa entrepreneurs may be replaced down the road by a new batch of players -- though probably not until after the Olympics, of course.