"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......

If you haven't noticed (perhaps you are a human ice cube?) it's hot out. Really hot. Today's forecast features a 36C high, which is 97F to the Americans in the audience, plus another 10-13 degrees for the heat index. Yesterday the mercury hit 39.6C, making it the hottest Shanghai day in 63 years. How hot is that, you ask? So hot that authorities announced put the city's heat-threat level at an orange alert. (it's not......

Officer dismissed for blogging "In China, there’s more precedent for blogging getting people in trouble with the police than there is for blogging in itself getting one getting fired. So what happens to cops who blog?" China bans firm from selling land on the moon "The company, Lunar Embassy to China, had sold a total of 49 acres (20 hectares) to 34 customers before authorities acted, Xinhua news agency said." Chinese Auditors Uncover 'Massive'......

On Saturday night, Shanghaiist was strolling along Changle Road (a long street), when we noticed a number of policemen in vehicles moving in both directions with their lights ablaze. Not that there is anything abnormal about that, but a motorcycled policeman did seem to take special interest in us, stopping for a moment to turn his head for a clear look. Perhaps it was because we had a large rucksack in tow or because......

First up, we have a couple of high-profile political imprisonings. There's the New York Times researcher, Zhao Yan, who has been sentenced to three years in jail for correctly predicting former president Jiang Zemin's retirement, aka "fraud." Then there is blind activist, Chen Guangcheng, who has been jailed for 4 years for pissing off local officials in Yinan, Shandong, after exposing their use of forced abortion as birth control. Officially, he was jailed for "damaging......

Our ongoing reader survey is showing us that a lot of you are foreigners. So, as a service to you we thought we would alert you that you very well could be walking around the city with a bull's-eye on your back. Shanghai is cracking down on laowais without work permits, according to this Shanghai Daily report: The monthlong inspection effort aims to make sure companies have acquired work permits for their foreign employees and......

Sports agents, rejoice! Your occupation is now official, according to China's Ministry of Labor and Social Security. That puts you right up there with lighting engineers and coffee makers. Xinhua reports: With China's economic development, disposable income of Chinese people has increased. The demand for diversified and personalized products has spawned new design and craft occupations, Liu said. This is the sixth time that China has added new occupations to the standard occupation list, which......