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Shanghai has China's second-largest population of foreigners and overseas Chinese, and 27.3 percent of them have come to the city purely for jobs, according to a report released on Monday by the municipal statistics bureau.

A total of 104,300 residents, more than 50 percent of the city's foreigners and overseas Chinese - people from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan - came to the city primarily for long-term work or short-term business in 2010, said the report, which is based on the sixth national census conducted in November 2010.

This is the first time foreigners and overseas Chinese were counted in the census.

"Shanghai has seen a rapidly increasing flow of foreigners coming for jobs over the past three to five years, and the trend continues and is expected to grow significantly in the near future, given the booming local economy," said Sun Haode, director of the labor and employment center for foreigners under the labor and social security bureau in Shanghai.

Sun said that he and his team are working to help local enterprises recruit foreigners, sign work agreements and apply for work permits for them.

According to the report, foreigners in Shanghai stay on average for 21 months, with people from South Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canadastaying the longest.

Gary Williams used to work as a bank manger in Newcastle, England, but he wanted to do something more exciting and came to Shanghai in January 2009 looking for a job in design and media. He is now the 26-year-old business director at Thread Design, a foreign-invested creative design company in Shanghai.

He said that the projects and opportunities have taught him that developing countries will turn to China, not the US or UK, for inspiration when looking for the best practices in design, branding and architecture," he said.

Williams thinks that a foreigner can either come to teach English, or come as a highly educated and experienced expat with a good offer for a position and salary in hand.

（中国日报网英语点津 Rosy 编辑）

About the broadcaster:

Emily Cheng is an editor at China Daily. She was born in Sydney, Australia and graduated from the University of Sydney with a degree in Media, English Literature and Politics. She has worked in the media industry since starting university and this is the third time she has settled abroad - she interned with a magazine in Hong Kong 2007 and studied at the University of Leeds in 2009.