China Is Growing Unfriendly to Foreigners

HONG KONG -- Brad Eddington arrived in Shanghai on a whim seven years ago and fell in love with the place. He got a job teaching English to kindergartners at a private school, an apartment in the trendy French Concession district, and a girlfriend. And even though he was on a visitor's visa he had to renew every year, he considered China his new home.

That changed this month. After several frustrating weeks of trying to negotiate China's new visa policies, getting exiled to Hong Kong and failing to gain permission to reenter the mainland, Eddington gave up.

Thousands of other foreign residents are also finding China far less hospitable than it once was because of visa restrictions tightened ahead of the Olympics and reported increasing hostility toward outsiders.

"I thought things would get easier the longer I stayed, but it's the opposite," said Eddington, 36, an Australian. "China's a different place than when I first came." The controversy over Tibet and the Olympic torch relay "may have surfaced feelings that had long been there" about foreigners.

Read the rest of this Washington Post article here.