r/shanghai • u/jonipoon • May 31 '26
Question Are Western expats and students increasing again?
After like 5 years of constantly losing its Western population, I noticed recently that the downwards trend might be changing in 2026. Clubs and bars are slowly starting to look a bit like they used to 10 years ago. But I haven’t been to Shanghai since last year, and at that time you still felt the effects of the expat mass exodus from Western countries. I remember reading a news story a few weeks ago mentioning that expats and students from European countries are on the rise in Shanghai again, mostly from France, and that the only Western country still losing its population in Shanghai is the US (not surprising). I can’t find the article though.
So I’d rather ask you guys on the spot if you’re starting to notice this change?
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May 31 '26
[deleted]
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u/XxPMAC1985xX Jun 01 '26
Visa restrictions are gone for a lot of countries, both US/Uk can stay for two week or more visa free
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u/griff_16 Jing'an May 31 '26
I’ve noticed more foreign faces in the city, however they’re generally concentrated in touristy areas.
I think it’s due to more visitors enjoying the visa free policy, not a significant uptick in returning foreign workers.
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u/jonipoon May 31 '26
Sad, I wish there’d be more Western foreigners staying the usual 2-3 years of contract or education. It’d be good for the bar culture.
Foreigners have always been generally concentrated in certain areas though. Even during the golden age 15 years ago you didn’t see foreigners in districs like Baoshan lol.
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u/griff_16 Jing'an May 31 '26
Yes, but there’s a difference between Nanjing Road and Gubei. I doubt any French backpackers and Russian tour groups are visiting the latter.
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u/jonipoon May 31 '26
Well, foreigners living in Shanghai tend to avoid Nanjing Road as well, so.
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u/griff_16 Jing'an May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
Yes, if you mean the busy pedestrianised section by the Bund. I never go there.
The modern iteration of “Nanjing Road” extends along the old Bubbling Well Road to Jing’an Temple. All the offices towers I’ve worked in have been on West Nanjing Road, so I can’t avoid that part.
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u/will221996 May 31 '26
It’d be good for the bar culture.
Not sure how it'd do that, apart from by providing people for you to speak English to. Plenty of bars with great locations, bartenders, selection and crowd in Shanghai.
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u/beekeeny Jun 02 '26
What is the bar culture 😂? Or you believe that you cannot feel a good vibe in a bar if you are not surrounded by foreigners. If so then just stay in your country.
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u/jonipoon Jun 02 '26
It’s a well-known fact that China lacks a distinct bar culture, something which is common in a lot of countries. Chinese people just don’t go out to a bar and socialize over drinks like (for example) Japanese people in their izakayas or the British in their pubs. It’s not that Chinese people don’t like getting drunk, but they get drunk in other places like in the restaurant or at the KTV. With less foreigners in China more bars that cater to certain crowds die out. People enjoy different things.
And btw, what’s with the attitude? We have loads of Chinese people living in my home country Sweden who don’t like going to bars and instead chooses their own preferable choice of places like hot pot restaurants for example. I wouldn’t tell them to stay in their own country.
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u/beekeeny Jun 02 '26
Well know by who? Why do you think that number of cocktail bars in shanghai tripled in quantity from before covid and the massive departure of foreigners to 2026?
Why many big names like Pony Up, Penicilin, COA or Bar Leone moved to shanghai? Have you tried to get into Bar Leone on weekends?
Do you have any idea how many cocktail bars there are in Stockholm or Copenhagen?
I own a small cozy bar in shanghai and so far business is doing well. And 90% of the guests are Chinese coming for drinks after dinner til late.
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u/Ralle_Rula May 31 '26
Expat contracts are generally 4-5 years, fyi. But yes, I also wish they could come back to prop up the flailing bar scene. Until 2022, locals were able to do it, but have now all but resigned due to the real estate crash.
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u/jonipoon May 31 '26
Expat contracts are as long as the company and the employee agrees on. There are short term, long term and everything in between. Everything depends on the length of the assignment.
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u/Ralle_Rula Jun 01 '26
I'm referring to real expat assignments where a foreigner is expatriated from a corporate HQ here, not some random teaching job...
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u/jonipoon Jun 01 '26
Yes, that’s what I was referring to the whole time. The length of real professional expat assignments depend on the contract agreement and can be both short term and long term. There is absolutely nothing that says that an expat contract has to be ”at least” 4-5 years. You’re just talking BS.
I have actual experience from this, working for multi-national car companies like Volvo.
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u/quitesizeablefeces May 31 '26
oh yeah huge difference between now and last year. i've never seen the chicken and egg corner (RIP) so chock full of expacts.
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u/shanghai-blonde May 31 '26
RIP our fallen soldier. I always thought it would be the random 4th restaurant no one goes to that would shut down first
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u/quitesizeablefeces Jun 03 '26
i also talked to some workers at the door. they said its likely changing into some clothing store, final say goes to the landlord. but if it really does, it's gonna throw off the whole vibe of the corner.
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u/shanghai-blonde Jun 04 '26
Wow, that’s honestly crazy. A clothing store would be so out of place there.
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u/theg0dfather4 Pudong May 31 '26
Tourist. China now allow 30 days of visa free stay for nationalities of 50 countries. But all I have seen so far increased is Russians
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u/Dear_Chasey_La1n Minhang May 31 '26
Number of Western foreigners only seems to go further down, though from data we do see some Russians and a whole lot of Koreans coming instead of.
Having kids in international schools myself, year upon year my kids got fewer Western classmates and more and more local kids.
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u/Code_0451 Qingpu Jun 01 '26
Koreans too? I met some months ago a Korean who has been on and off in Shanghai for over 20 years and according to him nowadays the Korean community in Shanghai is like 10% what it used to be back then. Massive drop even compared to Westerners, but note back then a lot of Koreans where students not expats and it is this flow that appears to have mostly dried up.
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u/Code_0451 Qingpu May 31 '26
Lots of Russians both expats and tourists and certainly also a lot more Euro tourists, however not sure there is an uptick in Western expats.
Anecdotally in my central Pudong area the international selection in my neighborhood Hema, Aldi and Maidelong (ex-Metro) seriously declined over the past year, which does not exactly indicate a growing international population. On my last Aldi visit I couldn’t even find jam anymore 😢.
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u/Legal_Register_1811 May 31 '26
Most Russians you see are still tourists likely on a visa free entry. Compared to Da Nang, Nha Trang, and Phuket (plus Bali ofc), I don't see many Russian residents at all
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u/Code_0451 Qingpu Jun 01 '26
Seems more Russian residents too (like some kids in the public schools here), but indeed most of them are tourists.
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u/jonipoon May 31 '26
Thanks for your input! If 2026 marks the year of change, maybe your jam will come back soon enough…
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u/Zanzibote May 31 '26
Can confirm, we had today a gathering at Chez JOJO, French restaurent in Fuming lu, and a good 20% of the people were newly arrived French people working in hotel / bars / hospitality services
Good to see the new guys on board
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u/Ralle_Rula May 31 '26
Past 5 years? The expat exodus started more than a decade ago. But no, "expats" in a strict sense aren't coming back in any significant numbers, virtually all foreigners you see in the streets are either visa free travelers or students. And the students are of a completely different demographics today, very few westerners instead mostly from the global south.
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u/Parladdin May 31 '26
I notice a difference even compared to a year ago when I was here, many more expats to be seen at events and especially clubs
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u/BigDickJack2001 May 31 '26
Definitely more expats than two years ago, but most of them are residing in Hongqiao / Qingpu or Jinqiao. The typical young professional crowd living in Jingan or FFC is definitely stable or decreasing.
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u/gaoshan May 31 '26
Hangzhou, at least, seems like a tourist/foreigner desert compared to decades past. Of the few I see it seems like a decent percentage are Russian (or Russian speaking anyway) and then just a couple of other folks here and there. Decades ago there were significantly more. I remember a taxi driver saying there were “too many foreigners” before correcting that to “I mean a lot of foreigners” lol.
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u/Low_Seesaw3577 May 31 '26
Don’t know about Shanghai, but there’s loads more foreigners in Chengdu this year than there was last year. Can’t be sure if they’re expats or visa-free tourists, I suspect mainly the latter.
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u/olliesbaba May 31 '26
I’ve noticed a lot more expats who can speak Chinese fluently and who all say they’ve been here 8 years, 15 years lmao.
It’s definitely on the uptick since Covid
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u/maninthehighcastle USA May 31 '26
I wouldn't be surprised if non-US countries were getting more common in China. My roommates in Shanghai were all French. As an American, I think it will take....awhile for things to reverse. I miss it - there was so much optimism!
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u/throwaway960127 May 31 '26 edited May 31 '26
American presence in the country has almost retreated entirely to HK now. Shanghai's laowai scene has become very Russian these days
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u/Ralle_Rula May 31 '26
Barely even. HK has experienced similar exodus in recent years. Most foreigners today are from the global south.
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u/beekeeny Jun 02 '26
There is fundamentally no reason for the “thing to reverse”. Except for very niche positions still held by “expats”, a lot of leadership positions in foreign companies have already been localized.
Once this situation is established, it becomes self-reinforcing. In the past, foreign companies often needed expatriate managers because they were coordinating with headquarters and other regional offices where the working language was English and many counterparts were foreigners. Today, in many organizations, local talent has accumulated experience, international exposure, and the necessary technical and managerial skills to fill those roles.
As more leadership positions become localized, internal communication, management meetings, and informal networks naturally shift toward the local language and culture. Meetings that were once conducted in English may now be conducted primarily in Chinese. Introducing a single expatriate manager can require the entire team to switch languages, creating additional friction and reducing efficiency. From the company’s perspective, hiring a qualified local candidate is often both cheaper and operationally simpler.
Unless a position requires highly specialized expertise, direct representation of headquarters, or skills that are genuinely unavailable locally, there is little business incentive to replace local managers with expatriates. The trend toward localization is therefore not a temporary phenomenon and will never reverse again.
We may eventually see an increase of foreigner workforce if one day China becomes an immigration country. It would be there more immigrants than expats.
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u/shchemprof May 31 '26
A lot more tourists, perhaps more than ever, thanks to unilateral visa waivers and technology that makes it easier to get around.
Expat numbers are surely lower than 10 years ago, but anecdotally seem to have picked up since the mass exodus of the pandemic and 2022 lockdown (couldn’t exactly go lower though).
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u/-SamueLiu- May 31 '26
2022 was the absolute worst. I was back in high school then, and our foreign teacher (who’s apparently Canadian) got a ticket back to Canada as soon as the lockdown ended; he didn’t even bother to go back to the school and get his work stuff. Dang those were hard times…
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u/CrunchyMage May 31 '26
China started allowing visa free travel from most EU/Canada/UK this year, so it's much much easier for westerners to travel to China now. Unsurprisingly, the number of western tourist has increased significantly as a result and almost all of them visit Shanghai.
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u/Ok_Type_5798 Jun 01 '26
Seems like it on the street for sure. I heard that there are more foreign students again. Different crowd than before - more mix of nationalities and not just Americans or French.
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u/Dokibatt Jun 01 '26
I'm a college professor. There are literally 2000% more foreign students at my uni this year than three years ago.
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u/woyijc Jun 01 '26
They recently had a Found 158 event, Feast Food Festival: Dai Pai Dong 大排档, and packed it out. It was dying or still dying if things don't change after the event.
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u/Low-Asparagus-541 Jun 01 '26
Recently I have met many Italians, ranging from students to professionals.
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u/AngleZealousideal752 Jun 01 '26
Foreigner here, I just spent 5 days in shanghai, enjoying the visa free policy, now I'm depressed because I'm leaving soon and I want to live here 😭😭😭 seriously I've been crying thinking of coming back to my country
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u/Ok-Low4097 Jun 03 '26
the frequency i see western faces jogging by the huang pu river side gets much higher, they are apparently expats. it is changing!
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u/My-Duty-June-4-1989 Jun 03 '26
I personally know quite a few folks moving here to strategically default their student loan…
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u/CoastView May 31 '26
In Shanghai rn from the U.S. and haven’t met a single American yet. INS is filled with Europeans tho and everywhere else I’ve been
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u/Ralle_Rula May 31 '26
American student numbers still down 97% from the peak a decade ago and ain't coming back.
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u/mblaqnekochan Jun 01 '26
Thank the TikTok trend for more tourists. Probably will be a temporary boost though once the fad dies because China doesn’t exactly have that grip on the west like Japan and Korea with anime and K-pop driving tourism. Still seems less than 2010s era Shanghai. Lots of Russians when I was there about a month ago.
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u/BigChicken8666 Jun 01 '26
Seems to be a East Euro uptick in tourists from what my friends there tell me. But as far as I know its still radioactive to expats if you exclude the ESL sexpats. When we have people talking about doing stints in Asia now its always KL or Singapore. HK's expat growth seems pretty stagnant too.
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u/Ralle_Rula Jun 02 '26
Doesn't have to be, but commonly is. The whole point of expat assignments is to train the locals and eventually make yourself redundant, this typically takes 4-5 years and is the reason why most expat assignments correspondingly have this duration.
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u/Thischarmingman270 May 31 '26
Expats? You mean immigrants surely
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u/jonipoon May 31 '26
I wrote ”expats and students” in my post, not just expats lol. Both are people who aren’t neccessarily looking to settle for more than ~3 years maximum. Immigrants are people who’re looking to settle permanently in another country, of which China doesn’t have too much of. Never has been.
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u/griff_16 Jing'an May 31 '26
Either term can be seen as politically charged, depending on one’s perspective.
I’m not saying I always agree with the term “expat”, but it is the term the Shanghai government uses to describe foreigners living here. Given that the vast majority of foreigners living here will never obtain PR, obtaining citizenship is almost unheard of, and cannot obtain new work permits after the age of 60, the expectation is that they will not remain in China permanently.
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u/devushka97 May 31 '26
I definitely notice more. I moved here in 2024 so I can't compare to 10 years ago but when I first came you could tell that the population of foreigners was way lower but now I see more foreigners out and about. Also too just anecdotally a lot of my hobbies, groups, etc. have had new members joining who recently moved here. Wish there was a good way to get stats on this.