{"id":49996,"date":"2026-05-05T18:01:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T10:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=49996"},"modified":"2026-05-05T18:01:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T10:01:34","slug":"4-years-after-lockdown-shanghais-expat-community-is-recovering-and-changing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=49996","title":{"rendered":"4 years after lockdown, Shanghai\u2019s expat community is recovering \u2013 and changing"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Four years after Shanghai\u2019s harsh citywide lockdown<\/span>, there are signs the city\u2019s expatriate population \u2013 which thinned significantly<\/span> during the pandemic \u2013 is starting to rebound, though with a notably different demographic profile.<\/div>\n

The sound of English, Korean and French is once again often heard drifting through the plane-tree-lined streets of Shanghai\u2019s former French Concession \u2013 widely seen as the heart of the city\u2019s international community. And local residents point to a gradual, though uneven, recovery.<\/p>\n

The French and German consulates in Shanghai have reported over the past six months that the local expat populations from their countries were \u201cstable or increasing again\u201d, said Denis Depoux, a global managing director at consultancy Roland Berger, who has lived in the city for 11 years.<\/p>\n

The European expat population \u2013 boosted by a recovery in international student numbers \u2013 may even have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, according to Depoux. But the same cannot be said for the United States or Japan, which saw a much larger exodus of expats during the pandemic and have struggled to recover, he added.<\/p>\n

While local authorities have yet to release updated figures on the city\u2019s foreign population, there is a sense that China may have benefited from a recent wave of positive attention related to its technological progress<\/span> and its willingness to stand up<\/span> to US President Donald Trump\u2019s global trade war.<\/div>\n

Still, a report by recruitment agency DirectHR last year suggests there is a long way to go. The firm found that Shanghai\u2019s foreign population had risen from a low of 84,237 in 2023 to reach nearly 92,000 in 2024 \u2013 though that remains far short of 2015\u2019s peak of about 178,000.<\/p>\n

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The expat community in Shanghai has turned over \u2013 it\u2019s a new crowd now<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Frank Kong Fuan, local official<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n


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Four years after Shanghai\u2019s harsh citywide lockdown, there are signs the city\u2019s expatriate population \u2013 which thinned significantly during the pandemic \u2013 is starting to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49997,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[1504,4300,22054,22053,22055,8570,59],"class_list":["post-49996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-changing","tag-community","tag-expat","tag-lockdown","tag-recovering","tag-shanghais","tag-years","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/49997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}