The service sector, IT and media industries have overtaken the education sector as major job sources for expats in China, according the 2019 Job Fair for Foreigners in Beijing, organized by the Foreign Talent Research Center and the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs. The Job Fair attracted more than 500 expats with nearly 1,000 jobs available in a range of professions. The expat job market, once dominated by language teachers, has seen a major shift. Approximately half the jobs available at the fair were in the sales, media, marketing and IT sectors, including openings for journalists, brand and communication managers, and software engineers.

“A certain level of Mandarin proficiency is an advantage,” said Yang Jiayin, Project Manager of the research center. The best-paying jobs generally require the ability to speak Mandarin and salaries are higher compared to the same jobs without the language requirement.” Yang added that the income gap between expats and Chinese employees in the same positions has been reduced in past decades. The annual salary of a foreign employee would be five to 10 times higher than that of a Chinese employee in the 2000s, but is now reduced to about two to three times – partly because salaries paid to Chinese have risen faster than expat salaries. Data from the previous 10 years show that more than 50% of job seekers are from European countries, with a majority from Spain and Portugal, while about 25% are from Asian countries, with a majority from India.

Last year, China issued about 336,000 work permits to foreigners. There were more than 950,000 expats working in the country as of the end of last year, compared to only 180,000 in 1996. The increasing number of expats working in China has also boosted related services targeting foreigners, such as restaurants catering to foreigners’ tastes and fast food delivery services, the China Daily reports.