Over the Weekend: 100 Million Chinese Leaving Each Year?
This item appeared on Saturday in the Wall Street Journal:
They're coming in greater and greater numbers: Chinese citizens leaving the mother country to tour and, more and more frequently, to stay. They leave China for various reasons ranging from unhealthy air and food products to oppressive government policies. Interestingly, the Chinese government encourages their departure. Both the numbers - 100 million per year and growing - as well as the mere fact that they can go are in many ways astounding.
Apparently anyone can now get a passport in China and head off for anywhere in the world that will accept them. Contrast this with the former ways of the Communist government, which once controlled every movement of every person within China's borders. The reasons for the change are complex, but one thing stood out in this article in the Wall Street Journal was the effort the Chinese government puts into keeping tabs on those whose wanderlust takes them far away.
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They're coming in greater and greater numbers: Chinese citizens leaving the mother country to tour and, more and more frequently, to stay. They leave China for various reasons ranging from unhealthy air and food products to oppressive government policies. Interestingly, the Chinese government encourages their departure. Both the numbers - 100 million per year and growing - as well as the mere fact that they can go are in many ways astounding.
Apparently anyone can now get a passport in China and head off for anywhere in the world that will accept them. Contrast this with the former ways of the Communist government, which once controlled every movement of every person within China's borders. The reasons for the change are complex, but one thing stood out in this article in the Wall Street Journal was the effort the Chinese government puts into keeping tabs on those whose wanderlust takes them far away.
Beijing makes a crucial distinction between ethnic Chinese who have acquired foreign nationality and those who remain Chinese citizens. The latter category is officially called huaqiao—sojourners. Together, they are viewed as an immensely valuable asset: the students as ambassadors for China, the scientists, engineers, researchers and others as conduits for technology and industrial know-how from the West to propel China's economic modernization.In Australia, destination of choice for many Chinese expatriates, the government takes a multi-pronged approach to making sure the Chinese Australians remain loyal to Beijing.
"Chinese Australians are being lectured, monitored, organized and policed in Australia on instruction from Beijing as never before," wrote John Fitzgerald of Swinburne University of Technology, one of the country's foremost China experts, in an article published by the Asan Forum, a South Korean think tank.And apparently the 100 million per annum is just the beginning. The annual outflow is expected to top 200 million by 2020.
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