“Hello! This is Park Jung-min from Qinyuan Community committee. Would you mind telling me when you got back to Suzhou from the Republic of Korea?” The Korean volunteer was calling a compatriot living in the community in his native language for a survey designed to prevent COVID-19. It is learnt that he now works two to five hours each day to serve in anti-epidemic actions, and he is not the only expat to do that.

Statistics show that SIP is now home to 11,813 long-term residents from Japan, the ROK, the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and other countries and regions. Since the early outbreak of COVID-19, SIP authorities have carried out multilingual publicity activities and offered a series of considerate services to assuage the expats’ anxiety about the epidemic. In return, many of the expats have volunteered to offer help in curbing the disease.