According to latest statistics, a passport is issued every three minutes in the city and 600 were issued each day on average last year.

Residents apply for passports for various reasons, including business trips, overseas studies, cultural exchanges, working abroad and vacations. Last year, 100,000 residents in Shanghai holidayed abroad, 11,000 left for work and 5,100 for overseas studies.

Guo Dingping, a researcher with the college of international relations and public affairs in Fudan University, said that the growing importance of passports in daily life in Shanghai indicated the city's deeper integration with the other parts of the world.

But as local people go abroad, foreigners enter: 2 million tourists come to Shanghai each year and over 300,000 foreigners live here.

(Xinhua News Agency June 17, 2002)