Since the early 1980s western men have been coming to China to work and live in coastal cities such as Shanghai, and many have become involved in sexual relationships with Chinese women. Using the framework of sexual capital and sexual fields, this article examines the changes in the sexual status of white western men in their relationships with Chinese women over the past 30 years. A historical perspective shows how the political economy of the interracial sexual field is conditioned by broader changes in the economic and social status of foreigners in China. Western men in China experience their foreign masculinity as both empowering and marginalizing, a kind of ‘alien sexual capital’ that is simultaneously exploitable but estranged. Chinese women find that they can invest in specific forms of sexual capital relevant to this field of interracial relationships, but also feel alienated from social and sexual relations with Chinese men. Despite some psychological stress, both for men and women, sexual capital produced in this interracial field is convertible to other forms of social and cultural capital relevant to life in the global city.

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This paper describes the policies of the People's Republic of China (PRC) for attracting skilled migrants and uses ethnographic fieldwork to discuss the actual employment situations of non-Chinese skilled migrants. Employing the concept of social fields, it describes skilled migrants in three employment sectors in the PRC: (1) Chinese academic and research institutions, (2) managerial work in multinational corporations, and (3) skilled culinary work in international restaurants. The discussion shows that ideas of “skill” are constructed with reference to cultural and ethnic traits perceived as assets in particular economic fields or ethnic capital. Moreover, migrants' ability to adjust to their professional contexts depends both on their cultural and ethnic capital and on their structural positions in the relevant field of work.