There isn't some hard rule like that. If you have no family connections to china, moved over to join some cool company, then came back a year later because you

There isn't some hard rule like that. If you have no family connections to china, moved over to join some cool company, then came back a year later because you got bored, your interim clearance would probably be denied, and your background investigation would probably take longer but you could still get a clearance.