Huang Ying, a United States citizen and vice-president of the Cloud and Intelligent Computing Department at Lenovo Research & Technology, was the first expatriate to apply for permanent residence at the center.

Huang said the application procedure took about one and a half hours and was simpler than he expected.

"Without permanent residence, it takes about 20 work days to apply for a work visa, and the approval process takes about a month. That means you must spend at least two months on the application process," he said.

Huang, a native of Shanghai, went to the United States in 1986 and later became a US citizen.

Andreas Haufe, a German citizen and manager at Beijing Benz Automotive, said he expects the center will help the company solve visa problems for its foreign employees.

"We appreciate the opening of the new center. We have about 250 colleagues who have to renew their visas every year. ... It is a question of time for our HR department to go to different visa offices for this task," he said.

Liu Shengnan contributed to the story.