Number of foreigners living in China increases in the past decade

China had an increasing number of foreign residents over the past decade, the latest population census shows. A total of 845,697 foreigners were living on the Chinese mainland in 2020 when the seventh national census was conducted, up about 250,000 from a decade ago. Around 402,000 of them are male. China started to track the population of foreigners in the sixth national census in 2010 and found 593,832 foreigners working and studying on the mainland. Duan Chengrong, Vice Dean of the Center for Population and Development at Renmin University of China, said the number of foreigners is increasing as the country continues to open up. He said the number could have been more if the Covid-19 pandemic had not occurred.

Census workers made home visits to collect data nationwide from October to December, when the outbreak was largely under control in China, but epidemic prevention and control measures had a negative impact on normal international passenger traffic. The latest census counted about 1.43 million overseas residents – a group comprising foreigners as well as people from the Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan – on the mainland by November. The coastal province of Guangdong has the largest number of overseas residents at about 418,000, followed by Yunnan province. Shanghai has a total of about 164,000 overseas residents. City authorities said that 18% of the foreign residents working in Shanghai are deemed to be high-end talent, and both the number and quality of foreign talent in Shanghai were ranked first in the country. Shanghai is now home to 767 regional headquarters of multinational companies and 479 research and development (R&D) centers. The city also leads the country in the introduction of visa policies to attract and retain international talent to work and set up businesses in the city. However, census data also show that the number of Taiwan residents on the mainland was less than a decade ago, the China Daily reports.