The pollution is choking, the traffic clogged, and the foodscares range from toxic bean-sprouts to the use of gutter oil in restaurants.Not to mention that this one-party state has a shoddy human rights record withno free press. So why is China fast becoming one of the most desirablelocations for expats to live?
The answer is money. This month, China ranked 7th in HSBC’s2012 Expat Explorer Economics annual survey, up from 19th the previous year.The survey measured disposable income, quality of life and the challenges ofraising children abroad (for which no data was provided for China), among otherthings, by talking to expats from four continents. Almost half of the expatssurveyed came with the expectation that they would earn more in China. Theyweren’t disappointed. Sixty-four percent stated they saw a marked improvementin their household’s financial status after arriving in the country.
People taking note of the survey might well be well-paidexecutives. But there are also younger expats moving to China, pushed away fromhome by unemployment and pulled to Asia by work and travel opportunities,combined with lower living costs. I am one of them. In 2009 I graduated fromBritain’s top post-graduate school for journalism into a recession. Jobs werehard to come by, compounded in the media by an industry in upheaval. Thatsummer, I was offered an internship at Time Out magazine in Beijing, which Itook. The decision was simple: China seemed like the future. Europe, for allits beauty, history and culture, was stuck. Unemployment was, and continues tobe, desperate. It was the right decision; my internship soon became a full-timeposition.
I am not alone. At least four friends from the samejournalism program have ended up working in China at some point over the lastthree years “ helped, of course, by a country that continually dishes up someof the juiciest stories around. My European friends work in architecture, nonprofits,fashion, finance and film. Bizarrely, for all its censorship, China is anenvironment in which creative types, from art to design, seem to thrive. Aboveall, China offers not only work but a chance to jump up a few career rungs.
Of course, the more than 1 million foreigners living inChina are far more varied than the well-paid executives and overqualifiedEuropeans fleeing the recession. Traders from Africa are arriving in thesouthern city of Guangzhou in large numbers; many Russians work in thecountry’s northeast; South Koreans make up a large proportion of Beijing’sexpat population. Foreigners entering China have increased by 10 percentannually since 2000, according to the vice minister of public security.
Life for European expats watching from afar as their homeeconomies crumble is bittersweet. Miguel Espigado, a Spanish language andliterature lecturer at Peking University, came to China in 2008, looking for“adventure, money, a cultural and exotic experience.” Four years later he feelshe cannot return home to Spain because there would be little for him to dothere.
For me, living in China is worth it for the energy, optimismand entrepreneurial spirit that comes with a growing economy. This spills intolife outside work, too. For all its grit and rough edges, Beijing is on its wayto becoming an international city. Here, you can eat in fancy Frenchrestaurants or try local cuisines, such as the delicate floral flavors ofsouthern Yunnan for as little as $8 a person. Brazilians I know shake theirheads in wonder at the low crime rate. Taxis, though increasingly hard to find,remain cheap, and travel across the country “ to China’s vast and fascinatinghinterlands “ is always a pleasure.
Today, pollution has reached the “hazardous” level. A cloakof gray smog covers the city; I can barely see across the street. For some oldChina hands, health compromises combined with the ever-present power of theCommunist Party in daily life, is enough to make them head home. As for me,I’ll stay where the jobs are.
Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore is an editor at Time Out Beijing
