Morita Lee, a senior Japanese engineer who has just been in Shanghai for three months, is one of more than 36,000 foreigners now working in the booming city.
He has taken up his new management position in Olympus' Shanghai branch.
The foreign employees come from 102 countries, mostly from Japan, the USA and South Korea.
The number of non-Chinese working in the city has been rising over the past five years, says the Shanghai Administrative Center for Employment of Foreigners (SACEF) under the Shanghai Municipal Labor and Social Security Bureau (SLSS).
SACEF director Sun Hande said there are more in Shanghai than any other major cities, including Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen.
That's because Shanghai, as the country's economic center, offers more vacancies requiring a high professional level, he said.
The director estimated that the number of new foreign workers will increase by 38 percent in 2004 and is expected to grow even faster next year.
Data from the bureau shows that 85 percent of foreigners work in foreign-funded companies or are representative agents of foreign firms.
Sun said only 13.9 percent of them work in domestic companies.
"More than 70 percent of these foreigners are taking up management positions, and another 15 percent are engineers or senior engineers," Sun said
"The city now has at least 3,600 foreign general managers."
Official figures also show that more than 90 percent of them have university or post-graduate degrees.
They seem to feel the city has many opportunities for them to develop their careers.
Nattavij Tevahudee, a Thai architect at the Shanghai branch of FRI Architecture, a France-based architecture design company, said working in Shanghai was extremely exciting.
"As far as the architecture business is concerned, China is really growing more rapidly when compared with my home country Thailand and France, where I got my master's degree," said Tevahudee.
He said Shanghai was the fastest-growing place in China and many more construction projects had been launched in the public sector and in the commercial and residential sectors.
"Working in the city, I get more chances to improve my professionalism through a succession of projects I am engaged in," Tevahudee said.
Apart from more chances to practise professional skills, these non-Chinese feel they also have a better chance of getting promoted.
John Mampilly, the chief representative of Wipro Limited, a well-known Indian Information Technology consultancy, said the prosperous IT sector meant some of his compatriots working in the cities had won easy promotions to management.
Mampilly said that as the IT sector is still a burgeoning industry in Shanghai, there are more business opportunities but less competition. Overseas professionals can more easily develop their businesses, improve their work performance and find recognition for the work they do.
Most of those in Shanghai also hold that the city offers a good living environment.
"Shanghai's infrastructure is good and public transport is very convenient," said Tevahudee.
Mampilly did mention some downsides - like the rush hour traffic congestion, and that although the Shanghainese were very friendly to work with they did not offer much in the way of social life for outsiders.
He said some Indian families working here had experienced difficulties in finding schools for their children.
source:China Daily
