Unfortunately, yeah. I could be wrong, however. Here is a bit of a challenge: find someone who is a normal working-class person who was not a Chinese citizen and who was able to go through the process and get permanent residency or citizenship. As a far as I know nobody has done it unless they were rich or famous. I think you could probably find somebody but I'm pretty sure it'll be some kind of extenuating circumstance. Definitely no westerners. It's a big complaint among expats who married a Chinese spouse. The process to being a permanent resident there is basically impossible. At some point in the process it will completely and indefinitely stall out.