The top three cities employing the 180,000 foreign workers in China
The Ministry of Labor and Social Security of China says there are 180,000 registered foreign workers in China, up 100% from 2003.
Most of those workers are in eastern China…which is no mystery since that is where most Chinese are.
The top three cities employing the foreigners –
1. Shanghai – 54,608
2. Beijing – 30,484
3. Guangzhou – 6,800.
Shanghai boasts workers from 130+ countries – Japan (28%), US (12.3%) and South Korea (8.9%).
Guangdong has workers from 108 countries – Japan (28%).
Japan, the United States and South Korea make up the biggest portion of workers in China.
How about you? Would you like to work in China?
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03/06/2007
From a relative perspective, this might be true. In other words, the rank ordering is correct. But the absolute numbers have to be way, way off. For example, there are over 70,000 Koreans in Qingdao, with about another 10,000-20,000 who are off the books (according to many local Koreans). I suspect that many/most are registered since they have to be if they have a Z or X visa (and most will have a Z or X visa) — or face the heavy RMB 500 per day penalty for not registering (that’s about USD 60 … per day). So, the numbers presented are definitely wrong.
Maybe the numbers are expats originating from North America or Europe. Then the numbers might be about right.
I’d like to see accurate numbers for the top 20 cities, i.e., the 20 cities with the most expats. More specifically, I’d like to see numbers by country of origin. There might be some surprises (maybe not, though — at least not to those of us living here).
03/06/2007
Oops … I made a mistake. The numbers imply a Z visa. But even then, the numbers seem way too low if Koreans and Japanese are included (and I have no idea how they treat Taiwanese or Hong Kongese in their stats). Actually, if it’s Z visa registrations for North Americans, Europeans, Aussies and Kiwis (plus the handful of South Americans, Africans and Middle Easterners here), then the numbers might be right. But they’re way too low if they include expats from other Asian countries.
11/06/2007
And what about the Dutch? Must be at least 10 to 20 thousand of them in China at this very moment (according to chamber of commerce in the ntherlands over 45.000 of them are active in or with China). Would love to know (and feature a story on our China Blog on this topic). From what I’ve learned so far figures could be as much as tenfold of 180k.