Surveyed expats say Shanghai, full of 'loving and caring', best Chinese city

Promising, cosmopolitan and loving was how some expats described Shanghai as it remained the Chinese city most attractive to foreign talent for the eighth year in a row, according to an official survey.

The survey results, released on Sunday, showed that Shanghai, home to about 215,000 expats, was favored over other big cities, including Beijing, Shenzhen and Guangzhou, both in Guangdong province, and Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.

The survey, conducted annually for the last 10 years, is organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology's State Bureau of Foreign Experts and typically attracts tens of thousands of expat participants.

Participants responded to questions in five categories－policy, governance, work, living, and science and innovation－the bureau said.

"With eight Nobel Prize laureates and a Turing Award winner among the participants in the voting this time, this year's survey had the largest number of participating high-end experts," the bureau said.

Nearly one in four of the expats working in China are in Shanghai, according to official figures, with 18 percent of the expat workers in the city high-end talent. Both the number and quality of foreign talent there rank first in the country, according to the bureau.

Spanish expat Rosa Lozano Duran made her first trip to China after deciding to join a plant science research institute in Shanghai as a principal investigator in 2015.

Having studied and worked in her home country as well as the United Kingdom and the United States, Duran, 39, said it was the best career move she had ever made.

"This Shanghai research center's goal is to become an international powerhouse for plant science," she said. "I had the dream and ideas to carry out independent research, and the institute helps realize my dream with resources and means of work."

Duran now leads an international group of 15 scientists from China and other countries, including Spain, France and Tunisia.

Shanghai was also a national pioneer in approving expats' work permits at the district level and for establishing a dual-level network for management of and services for expats that has gradually formed at the city and district levels.

Italian expat Barbara Vaccaro, who started her art studio business early last year, said that while she and her husband were not high-level experts benefiting from preferential policies, the processes of getting work permits and applying for a business license went smoothly.

"I was amazed by the burgeoning local art market and the speed that new art museums have opened," she said. "That was also an element that led to our plan to stay in the city for more years."

The Ronghua community in the city's Changning district is known as "a mini-United Nations", as it accommodates expats from more than 50 countries and regions. More than half its 32,000 residents are from overseas.

Sheng Hong, director of the neighborhood community, said "loving and caring" is what she often hears from expat residents when they describe the city, its government services and people-to-people relationships.

"During this special year under the influence of the pandemic, we have made efforts to inform expat residents of the latest epidemic situation and the city's measures through various channels, and we have provided extra services, including food and books, for those subject to home quarantine," she said.