@jan & living
Thank you. Will look at both as alternatives.

I use wise.com to transfer money into China. My personal situation is a string of short term student visas so the bank won't allow me to open account that allows the 1 thing I want (receiving international funds) so I transfer to my friends account and they forward the money to me.

westerunion is the "old way" of transfer money. then it is bit of tricky to track the money. if your recipient has a chinese bank account that works with paypal

it is the easy way to go. the downside is paypal cost on both sides

nowadays.you have a fee on sending the money, and the recipient has no fee on recieving the money but a fee on cash it into the bank account. money land in recipetant paypal account is USD or the currency you choose to be.

the procedure is "send-recieve-withdraw." every step is trackable. and no intervene in the middle process. if your recipient has a bank account no association with paypal, it is fine. you can still use xoom from paypal. the total fee is slightly less and it soupposed to be instant transfer. however, the real process might takes up to 72 working hours. so if money sent in monday, money will be landed at thursday. xoom takes whatever currency with the options to transfer upon sending by your choice of local currency. the exchange rates slightly less than a bank offer. when the recipient is the first time get thru xoom transfer, he/she will get a msg when money landed in china to verify his/her identity at the chinese bank union's request. and that's all. the later transfer will just free to go.

good luck.