For expats, Shanghai tops list for desirability again

More than a third of expats want to stay in China

More than a third of expats who participated in the survey said they wished to live in China in the long term (33.9 percent). There is a relatively large gender difference, where 38.8 percent of men expressed a stronger intention to remain in China, more than 10 percent higher than that for women (25.6 percent).

Furthermore, more older foreign professionals, especially those more than 40 years of age, said they wished to live in China in the long term. Willingness to stay for expats older than 50 (45.2 percent) was more than double of that in younger professionals aged from 18 to 30 (21.9 percent).

Single expats don't mind marrying Chinese

The mentality for expats living in China has shifted from a sense of "strangeness" to a sense of "belonging."

More than half of single foreign professionals (55.2 percent) said they don't mind marrying a local Chinese. The percentage for those who don't mind their children marrying Chinese is even higher, a striking number at 71.3 percent.

To Majdi Alhmah, a Syrian Director General Manager of BFG International China in Changchun, Jilin province, who has married a Chinese woman, the city of Changchun has given him plenty of warmth.

"Chinese people view family values very importantly, I really appreciate this. My biggest achievement and happiness after coming to China is them (referring to his wife and their son.) I am half Chinese in my bones," said Alhmah.

Localization and domestication

Smart phone app WeChat has surpassed Weibo as the most favored app for connecting with family and friends for expats.

In a multi-answer question, 66.5 percent of expats said they use WeChat. Facebook, the world's largest photo sharing application, ranked second at 56.6 percent. Thirty-nine percent use Tencent QQ and the user rate for Weibo was only 22.4 percent.

Use of social media was widely localized but more than half of expats living in China (52.8 percent) still chose to read news from home. Only 28.3 percent of participants answered that they read news released from Chinese media, but this tendency expressed a positive correlation with the age of expats.

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