Moving to Tianjin

Today we look at moving to Tianjin in China from George Town in Cayman Islands. We highlight cost of living and other major differences likely to be experienced in our series of short blogs on moving between different international locations.
In Tianjin people speak Mandarin Chinese. In George Town people speak English.

Tianjin is the sixth largest city of the People's Republic of China in terms of urban population. Administratively it is one of the four municipalities that have provincial-level status, reporting directly to the central government. Also, its urban land area is the fifth largest in China, ranked only after Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. George Town, Grand Cayman, is the capital of the Cayman Islands, in the British West Indies.
Manufacturing is the largest (60.1%) and fastest-growing (18.2%) sector of Tianjin's economy. Farmland takes up about 40% of Tianjin Municipality's total area. Wheat, rice, and maize are the most important crops. Fishing is important along the coast. Tianjin is also an important industrial base. Major industries include petrochemical industries, textiles, car manufacturing, mechanical industries, and metalworking. George Town is the heart of the Cayman Islands financial industry, with over 600 banks located there. Most of these are small one room operations, some having no physical location on the island at all. It also has cruise ship facilities and several shopping plazas.

The overall cost of living rank in Tianjin is 275 out of 300 global locations, which equates it with low cost of living locations.  An expatriate moving from George Town to Tianjin will experience a change in cost of living of -29%.
In terms of the hardship people are likely to experience, assessed in global terms, Tianjin is ranked as a high degree of hardship location with a hardship index of 30% compared to George Town with a hardship index of 20% which is a some hardship location.

Source: http://www.xpatulator.com as at July 2011.