"Kim Soo-seok, 44, a South Korean, is accused of abducting a young fellow countryman who studied in Shanghai in a bid to extort 300 million won (US$295,000) from the victim's wealthy father. His two alleged Chinese accomplices, Jin Mingyu and Chi Minhao, both ethnic Koreans, face charges of illegal detention before the Shanghai No. 1 Intermediate People's Court. The two alleged accomplices pleaded guilty, but Kim said he was entrusted by a friend in South......

Interesting vid by Chris Pereira of Work in Progress [h/t to Danwei]. Wonder if he wrote the song himself?......

"According to the draft, the social-insurance policy expansion will cover expats working for city employers, foreigners who have acquired permanent residency and residents of Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. If it is approved, qualified candidates will be allowed to join the city's pension, medical and industrial-injury insurance systems on level terms with their Shanghai-native counterparts. People who have been paying into the city's pension fund for an accumulative period of 15 years before retirement age......

Blogging for China is holding a lively debate on the subject, spawned by a translated MITBBS post in which the writer lists three definitions of the classification: the official (you’re your passport says), the ethnic (what your mother says) and the cultural (what your China addiction — to more than just cheap DVDs and instant noodles — says). Good news for Red Laowai and those of us who can never hope to be mistaken for......

We've been writing a lot about the visa situation recently, which has gotten more and more bothersome as the Olympics approach. But this tactic is a new one: Matt of bizCult gives us a play-by-play of his experiences using a student visa... for business purposes. Pros: easier to obtain, multiple entry, much cheaper. Cons: actually having to go to class sometimes, like the Mongolian prostitutes using the same strategy. All in all, Matt gives the......

At this point, this is only an unsubstantiated rumour but a highly plausible one given what we've seen and heard in the last few months. Here is an email sent to us by one teacher at an international school in Shanghai, and we quote verbatim: "I don't know anymore specifics, but I received an Email from my principal warning us about our online behaviour after an international school teacher was deported from China. I don't......

As China rapidly climbs to world economic power, some enterprising individuals are emigrating here in the hopes of finding a new version of the American Dream. Blogging For China translates an article from the Southern Metropolis Daily on African traders who move to China (notably the city of Guangzhou, which currently holds an estimated 100,000 Africans) with the same burning desire of an earlier generation who emigrated to America: a better life. Many of them......

From the highly authoritative People's Daily:The Beijing Olympics official website recently released "A guide to Chinese law for Foreigners coming to, leaving or staying in China during the Olympics" (hereinafter referred to as "the Guide"). The Guide points out that ticketholders for the Olympic Games from overseas will not automatically be granted a visa. They still need to apply for a visa from China's overseas embassies. Fons Tuinstra of China Herald fills us in on......

The Beijing Olympic Organising Committee (BOCOG) has just issued a 57-para "legal guide" 《奥运期间外国人入境出境及在中国停留期间法律指南》for all you foreigners intending to visit China during the upcoming Olympics. The document is available here on the BOCOG website but curiously enough, it is available only in Chinese and not in any other language. Perhaps they decided to save themselves the effort because they knew all the foreign media would translate them anyway. Here are some lovely excerpts as translated......

Carry your passport with you wherever you go, says the Exit-Entry Administration of the Shanghai Public Security Bureau because police are going to step up on their random checks. Good times.Professors from Tongji University are now working on the preservation of historic and cultural relics damaged in the Sichuan earthquake, including a systematic protection plan for Dujiangyan's more than 2,000-year-old irrigation infrastructure.A 61 year old retired teacher has put up her 148 square metre Xujiahui......

Some of you are starting to get in touch with us to send us your list of missing loved ones or friends. We were going to publish this list later, but decided we couldn't wait when we heard this bit of good news: John Bergen of Sichuan Tech and Business College in Dujiangyan has been found, and we've since contacted his friend Peter to let him know. And here's the list of missing foreigners as......

The huge African community in Guangzhou is starting to feel the heat as many of them are being forced to leave the country because of new visa policies, reports Bloomberg citing the South China Morning Post:Nearly half of the 10,000 Africans in the city have already been forced to leave because their visa-renewal applications have been denied and at least 100 people are stranded in Macau without enough money to return home, the newspaper reported.......

Photo from Heidi D Via Danwei: For the first time, the Chinese Foreign Ministry has acknowledged that visa procedures have been tightened. Said Qin Gang, according to the AP:"We have made some arrangements according to usual international practice. That is, in the approval process we are more strict and more serious with the procedure," Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said. He did not directly link the changes to the Aug. 8-24 Beijing Olympics, but......

READ THIS: Volunteer in China: "I was not in fact attacked by a mob" Editor's note: This post has been updated. Details after the jump. Here's an email we received from a volunteer teacher from an Ivy League university volunteer programme in Hunan Province (who shall remain unnamed to protect the identities of everyone involved) — a chilling account of an attack on his colleague by an anti-Carrefour mob in Zhuzhou. The matter has been......

As part of their "China Issue", GOOD Magazine — a relatively new American publication "for people who give a damn" — are running a feature on the trials and joys of living as an expat in China. Several Shanghai residents, including some bloke named Dan Washburn, are featured with their differing views on fitting into a foreign land (or adopting it as their own, to the exclusion of any other filthy laowai interaction). The full......

April 1st marked the birth of Comme à la maison, the new French online magazine based in our beloved city. Directed to a young (half of it between 25 and 40 years old) and growing readership (more than 6,000 baguette-eaters are said to amble their way around Shanghai these days – compared to 5,000 Germans and 3,500 English), this new online publication clearly defines its aim as dealing with “art de vivre” (the art of......

We told you it wasn't going to work in Hong Kong. And now it won't even work in Shanghai! Here's the latest update from everyone's favourite visa guy, Magic, from VisaInChina.com:From 1st April 2008, The Entry and Exit Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security update the visa policy again. According to that, now the Authority will not accept of changing the visa type from L visa to F visa or F visa to......

Anti-China exiles ready for Tibet trek [AFP] "Tibetan exiles in India were set to begin marching to their homeland Monday as part of protests marking the Dalai Lama's escape from China in 1959 and the run-up to the Beijing Olympics."China's International Schools are Growing [US-China Today] "Christiana Lilly is not your typical American girl. As the daughter of a diplomat, her world and life experiences extend far beyond the United States. Between Taiwan, Singapore, Burma,......

A few weeks ago, Richard Brubaker of All Roads Lead to China reported:I just received an email from a friend who said that they were being told they could not renew their F visa fro within China anymore. A quick Skype to another confirmed that F visas cannot be extended past the Olympics. That apparently is not the case, but the cost of an F visa has gone up quite a bit. In Richard's latest......

As mentioned before, US expatriates are, for the first time, able to vote in a global primary, meaning that they get their own set of delegates during the primaries, which decide each party's respective presidential candidate. This particular event, held on Tuesday at the ecologically sound and coolly designed URBN hotel, was well attended. Computers were set up to help people register, liquor and hors d'ouevres helped people mingle, and Barack Obama's victory speech from......

In our past life as a public relations executive, we were always surprised at how China's media world appears to be in sort of a pre-Cambrian age with as many publications going out of business as there are coming in. Call up all the journalists you've invited after a press conference and there always be bound to be one or two publications that have folded up. Well it appears we haven't quite come out of......

By Derek Sandhaus Good news for all you laowai's out there, Shanghai is heaven!!! At least it is according to the online edition of the People's Daily, which featured a fluff hard-hitting piece on how Shanghai has become the refuge of the foreigners, ballooning from 4,000 to 60,000 in the 2000s. The argument goes something like this: more expats = Shanghai is clearly heaven. The reasons cited include: job opportunities, high-wages/low costs, and easy entry/exit......

The lawyers over at Dezan Shira are reminding us that expatriate employees in China are required to file their annual individual income tax returns by end March for income earned in 2007. Not sure if you're subject to the self-declaration? Well, you need to file if you meet the following five conditions:1) An annual income of more than RMB120,000 2) Income derived from two or more places inside the People’s Republic of China 3) Income......

We’ve known since arriving in Shanghai that there are two types of waiguoren out there: the ones with the chauffeur-driven cars, portly bellies and a company villa in a hermetically-sealed Jinqiao gated community; and the rest of us. Not that Shanghaiist is bitter or anything, in fact, we quite like the directionless romantic bent of our life at present. Which is why we’re suspicious of labels, such as this one, dug up by John at......