4 years after lockdown, Shanghai’s expat community is recovering – and changing

Four years after Shanghai’s harsh citywide lockdown, there are signs the city’s expatriate population – which thinned significantly during the pandemic – is starting to rebound, though with a notably different demographic profile.The sound of English, Korean and French is once again often heard drifting through the plane-tree-lined streets of Shanghai’s former French Concession – widely seen as the heart of the city’s international community. And local residents point to a gradual, though uneven, recovery.The French and German consulates in Shanghai have reported over the past six months that the local expat populations from their countries were “stable or increasing again”, said Denis Depoux, a global managing director at consultancy Roland Berger, who has lived in the city for 11 years.