Shanghai a top place to start business and live, says expat

Ti Gong

For two years, Marie Mathilde Costa, a French expatriate living in Shanghai, hasn't been able to visit her family back home due to travel restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but she believes she will stay on here.

Costa and her husband Louis have been running a dental clinic in Shanghai since 2011. For her, Shanghai is a city with perspectives that attracts foreigners, especially entrepreneurs, thanks to its vitality and openness.

"I love Shanghai, or else I wouldn't be staying here," she told Shanghai Daily in a recent interview.

The couple were living in Moscow, where Costa's husband worked as a dentist for a privately owned clinic, before seeking fortune elsewhere.

"We had sought other countries, such as Brazil, Turkey and India, but we had a two-week travel in China in 2005 and fell in love with Shanghai," she said. "We loved how everything is so new here, and we loved it that the Chinese people are very friendly and open-minded with foreigners."

They noted that there is a large community of expats in China and a big French community as well, perhaps around 20,000 people, but no French dental clinics. They decided this was a brilliant business opportunity.

It took them two years to finally establish their business with a license, business space and dentists.

"It took some time, but it was not impossible," Costa said. "All we needed to do was to follow the rules, which made things easy and convenient."

Costa, who is the director of the clinic which has five dentists, said it is doing well with patients from both the expat community and local Chinese.

"During the past years, I have seen a lot of improvements in medical and dental care in this city," she said. "We collaborate with various clinics and doctors here. Although Shanghai is a huge city, the medical and dental care businesses work close together and help each other."

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Costa said she has a lot of friends who have businesses here in Shanghai, but the COVID-19 pandemic made it more difficult for those who often traveled back and forth between China and Europe to see clients.

For this reason, some have returned to Europe, but others, such as those work in medicine, lifestyle and fashion, still see Shanghai as a top destination to start businesses, she said.

Communication has been made more convenient and with some software foreigners can communicate with Chinese people even if they don't speak Chinese.

Also, China and Shanghai have increasingly had their names heard in the world in the past decade, so now many foreigners know about Shanghai and want to come here, she noted.

"In the past two years, I find the city has become more and more international and fashionable," Costa said. "The government of Shanghai has been pushing the city open and making it easier for foreigners to come and work here."

The couple's four kids are living in Shanghai as well, and that's one more reason for them to choose to live here.

"Shanghai is a very safe city, and it's very important to us that our kids can live in a particularly safe environment," Costa said.

Ti Gong