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THE expanded consular section of the US Consulate General in Shanghai opened Monday afternoon, with an increase in visa applications capacity of about 50 percent to 600,000 applications a year, consulate officials told Shanghai Daily today.

The section has grown from 12 to 28 service windows to meet the growing demand for visa services in Shanghai and surrounding areas, officials said.

The visa application waiting room has been expanded from 330 to 556 square meters, while the office space has grown from 932 to 1,942 square meters.

Construction took only at night during the past year to prevent it from affecting daily visa processing work, said Jewell Evans, consular chief of US Consulate Shanghai.

The Shanghai office is the seventh-largest US consular section in the world.

Discussions between China and the United States also are being held about a possible new US Consulate General building in Shanghai, according to Patrick F Kennedy, Under Secretary of State for Management of the US Department of State.