China

The honest take

China is the destination nobody in the expat conversation discusses seriously enough — partly a post-COVID hangover, partly the Great Firewall's reputation, and partly because the path here is genuinely harder than most. It rewards the effort in ways that Singapore and Hong Kong, for all their merits, structurally cannot replicate. Shanghai is one of the world's genuinely cosmopolitan cities: international schools, English functional in business contexts, a food scene shaped by two centuries of foreign influence, and direct access to the largest domestic consumer market on earth. Shenzhen is where hardware gets made — every component, factory, and prototype service exists within a taxi ride, and anyone building physical products should spend at least a year here to understand what that actually means in practice. Beijing is for education, government-adjacent industries, and understanding how decisions in this country get made. Chengdu offers the quality-of-life case: 20 million people at the pace of a much smaller city, excellent food (a different kind of excellent from Shanghai), and a growing tech scene anchored by local giants and foreign R&D centres at roughly half of Shanghai's cost. The work permit is employer-tied and document-heavy — degree verification, prior experience, police clearance. The Great Firewall is a real daily friction: Google, YouTube, Instagram, WhatsApp, and most Western services are blocked; VPN access is technically illegal but practically tolerated for foreigners in business contexts. Mandarin will multiply your quality of life faster here than anywhere else on earth, because the baseline without it is genuinely low. Every foreigner who has stayed long-term and thrived has, without exception, learned the language.

Cost of living

Estimates from Numbeo and community data. Actual costs vary by city, lifestyle, and how much you're willing to cook.

Practical details

Visa options

These are the main legal pathways. Requirements vary by nationality. Always verify with the official embassy or a qualified immigration lawyer.

Guides