China's front door, reopened: a 135-million-passenger airport system, the world's busiest integrated hub at Hongqiao, and a visa-free wave that pushed foreign arrivals up 40% in a single year.
Shanghai runs on scale with a luxury edge: the Bund's palace tier and J Hotel's tower-height pricing meet a business grid feeding the world's largest metro. The new layer is Qiantan and the Expo district — Waldorf Astoria, Thompson, Andaz — where the city's next skyline is being built hotel-first.
The engine is policy: visa-free entry for 47 countries and the 240-hour transit rule pushed Shanghai's foreign arrivals up 39.7% in 2025, with Japan, Korea and the US leading the passport table.
The Shanghai dossier is live — tracker plus four urban reads: the airport node, the rail node, the passport table and the money flow.
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