Issued every five years, the report said there were a total of 119,876 expatriates living in the city in 2006, compared to 61,610 in 2002. The number of expats working in foreign-invested companies in the city increased from 40,076 to 76,873 over the same period.

The report found local workers’ average salary increased 11 percent annually between 2002 and 2006. The annual wage of local workers on average reached 29,569 yuan (US$4,224) in 2006.

But the report also said the average monthly salary had gone up 9.1 percent between 2006 and April last year to 2,687 yuan.

The number of local workers who were paid less than 2,000 yuan every month decreased from 83.2 percent to 58.1 percent between 2002 and 2006.

The report said the number of workers in the service industry increased four-fold over the past five years, the number in the financial industry increased 65 percent, and the number of real estate industry professionals rose 36 percent from 2002 to 2006.

Those working in state-owned enterprises dropped by 31.7 percent, while the number of staff in foreign-invested companies and Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan enterprises increased 25.6 percent. The survey covered nearly 4,000 local employees.

The Location Ranking Survey, conducted by one of the world’s largest human resources organizations, ECA International, ranked Shanghai in 11th place in Asia and 78th in the world in terms of expat living conditions.

The city retained its top spot among the 13 cities in Chinese mainland that included Beijing, Nanjing, Tianjin, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Xiamen.

The annual survey compares living standards in 254 locations around the world according to categories including climate, air quality, health services, housing and utilities, isolation, social network and leisure facilities, infrastructure, personal safety and political tensions.

Overall scores are used by ECA member companies to establish allowances to compensate staff for the difficulties of living abroad.

Hong Kong, Taipei and Macau took the top three places in China, with Shanghai in fourth place, the survey reported.

Nanjing, capital of neighboring Jiangsu Province was rated second to Shanghai on the Chinese mainland.

The study showed second-tier cities were moving up the ranks while first-tier cities moved down. For instance, Shenzhen surpassed Guangzhou and Xiamen to become the fifth preferred place to live in, but Beijing dropped five places globally.

Lee Quane, general manager of ECA International in Hong Kong, said that as the availability of consumer goods in Chinese cities continued to improve, along with better health care and recreation facilities, Chinese cities would continue to rise in the ranks.

However, drawback factors that worked against Chinese cities included pollution, Quane said.

“Pollution levels in China remain very high, as this is an unfortunate consequence of China’s development,” he said, adding that high levels of pollution were partly responsible for Beijing’s fall this year.

Concerns over the quality of Chinese products also remained.

Globally, Singapore remained the favorite destination for Asian expats while Baghdad came bottom of the list.

The list, made by World Entrepreneur magazine, covered magnates in the Chinese mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao. The Kwok brothers of Sun Hung Kai Properties in Hong Kong took top place on the list. Yang Huiyan of Country Garden and the family behind Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings) Limited were the top two magnates from the mainland.

According to statistics, there are more than 18,000 people in China with more than a hundred million yuan in wealth (nearly 14 million US dollars), 440,000 with 10 million, and the nation’s number of millionaires now accounts for 3.3 percent of the total population.

The stupendous increase in Chinese magnates is been attributed to high-speed increases in the stock and property markets. Among the 500 magnates on the list, 128 are from the real estate industry.

People working in the information technology industry earned more than employees in all other industries on average last year, according to the Shanghai Statistics Bureau.

They were followed by workers in the finance, electricity, gas and water, real estate and scientific research sectors.

The wage gap between different sectors widened last year. The average wage in the IT sector was 3.55 times of the average salary for those in the service sector, the lowest paid group of workers, while in 2000, the average wage in the highest sector was 3.24 times that of the lowest.

From 2000 to 2006, wages in the manufacturing industry grew 13.3 percent annually, and wages for the service sector grew 14.6 percent. Local employees earned 29,569 yuan (US$3,937) a year on average last year, up 10.2 percent from a year earlier. The city’s average salary has grown at an annual rate of 10 percent in recent years, with yearly income reaching 26,820 yuan in 2005 and 24,396 yuan in 2004.