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Here's How Many Foreigners There Are In Shanghai and Where They Are From

Ever wondered how many French people live in Shanghai? 8,659. Americans? 21,903. How do we know this? Oh, just a brief browse around the fascinating Shanghai Statistics Bureau website, while doing som...
Last updated: 2019-05-14

Ever wondered how many French people live in Shanghai? 8,659. Americans? 21,903. How do we know this? Oh, just a brief browse around the fascinating Shanghai Statistics Bureau website, while doing some research this morning. See for yourself right here. Granted, these numbers are a little outdated (2017) but they are the most updated the SSB has right now, from the 2018 Shanghai Statistical Yearbook, which was released in early 2019. So how many total foreigners in this city we call home?

163,000

163,363 to be exact, to count every last one of you.

That's like, what, enough people to fill in Found 158 and then build a human structure 36 stories high?

That would be slightly lower than the previous year (2016), when there were 175,674 foreigners in this city, a trend that is expected to continue in 2018.

So, let's break this thing down by nationality:

Japanese: 28,870
Korean: 20,823
Singaporean: 5,786
German: 7,583
British: 5,993
Canadian: 7,439
American: 21,903
Australian: 6,995
French: 8,659 For comparison's sake, Chinese: 24.2 million

And what are you all doing, according to the Statistics Bureau?
79,701 are working
18,985 are studying
16,367 are visiting family
42,769 are handling "private business"
5,439 have green cards
and 102 of you are journalists

If you're into these kinds of things, here's another fascinating page out of the yearbook. What does it show? What doesn't it show! The beating and changing soul of the city!

Specifically, it shows Shanghai's 2017 population was 24.2 million during 2017, meaning foreign residents account for just six-tenths of a percent of the total population, or 0.6%. Don't take yourself too seriously out there, then, Mr. Smith.

It also shows a few other things, like the phenomenon of the shrinking family, with the average family size falling from 3.77 in 1980 to just 2.66 people in 2017. And, very interestingly, that the proportion of women in the population is steadily increasing, and women began to outnumber men for the first time in 2009, which — I'm just guessing here — is when MVP Events probably started their first Ladies's Nights at Bar Rouge. Just saying. Coincidence?

Anyway, if your Chinese can stand it and you want to troll the 2018 yearbook for more entertaining facts and figures, the link is right here.

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