Four years after Shanghai’s strict lockdown, the city’s expat community shows signs of slow recovery. French and German consulates report stable or increasing local expat numbers, but US and Japanese populations lag. DirectHR data shows the foreign population at nearly 92,000 in 2024, far below the 2015 peak of 178,000.
Four years ago, Shanghai’s draconian lockdown sparked an exodus of foreigners. Now, the sound of English, Korean, and French is once again heard on the plane-tree-lined streets of the former French Concession, the heart of the city’s international community. Local residents note a gradual, though uneven, recovery.
Denis Depoux, a global managing director at consultancy Roland Berger who has lived in Shanghai for 11 years, said the French and German consulates reported over the past six months that local expat populations from their countries were “stable or increasing again”. He added that the European expat population, boosted by recovering international student numbers, may have bounced back to pre-pandemic levels. The same cannot be said for the United States or Japan, which saw larger exoduses and have struggled to recover.
A report by recruitment agency DirectHR last year found Shanghai’s foreign population rose from a low of 84,237 in 2023 to nearly 92,000 in 2024—still far short of the 2015 peak of about 178,000.