China

PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA - MIGRATION IN 1998

Most of the news on international migration in China centered on irregular migration — mostly to Hong Kong (especially after the January 19 ruling on the right of abode) and the U.S., and some to Britain. News reports indicate that irregular migration from China is far from spontaneous. About 100,000 migrants are smuggled out of China every year, raking in some US$1.3 billion for the syndicates which orchestrate the whole process. Nor is the practice new. Human smuggling has been going on for the last 20 years, and it seems the system has been perfected over the years. "Snakeheads" or smugglers recruit potential migrants (at US$33,500 per head), targeting mostly migrants from the southern province of Fujian. Migrants are then provided with forged documents and are transported to transit stops such as Hong Kong and Thailand, and then to the intended country of destination. Applying for asylum has been used to gain entry to western countries. Syndicates do not simply smuggle people, they also exact protection money from migrants for lodging and work. And they could extort money from migrants’ families back in China, using blackmail and other coercive means. A book written by Peter Kwong suggests that several thousand Chinese women may have been trafficked into the U.S., forced into prostitution and live under sub-human conditions, controlled by the syndicates.

Mainlanders continue to explore legal international migration. Mainland applications accounted for as much as 70 percent of all applications in the Canadian mission in Hong Kong. Canada allows interested parties to apply to any mission, and mainlanders from the south have found it more convenient to travel to Hong Kong than to go to Beijing.

There has been a notable return of scholars sent abroad in recent years. China sent more than 300,000 students to western countries for advanced studies, as recommended by Deng Xiao Ping. Of the 160,000 sent to the U.S., less than 20 percent have returned. A trickle of highly trained returnees are making a comeback, lured by possibilities of landing influential jobs. They may be small in number, but they are important in linking China to the outside world.

In the wake of the famine in North Korea, thousands of refugees have flooded border provinces in China to find some relief from hunger. The famine in North Korea has claimed at least two million lives. Based on interviews with North Koreans, many are said to be moving about in search of food. On the other hand, there were also several Chinese who sought refuge in other countries. There was the case of some 110 Chinese boat people held up in New Caledonia; they would have been repatriated had it not been for international support against their deportation and the last-minute decision of Chinese authorities to cancel the flight back to China. There might also be an outflow of an ethnic minority from China to their homeland in Vietnam (which is about 25 kilometers away). This involves some 3,000 Dongs, one of the smallest ethnic minority groups in China. The group alleged that the Chinese government forcibly took their farmland since 1992 without just compensation, depriving them of basic subsistence.

Migration had political uses for dissidents and the state. For the former, exile provided an alternative to repression (as in the case of Wang Dan, a former student leader in the Tiananmen protest, who went into exile to the U.S. after his release from jail). The latter expelled or barred dissidents from the country but it also granted selected individuals the freedom to move (e.g., the granting of travel papers to the parents of Wang Dan was seen as part of the goodwill show for President Clinton’s visit to China in July 1998).

Some decisions or plans have been set in place in view of Macau’s reversion to China at midnight on 20 December 1999. Beginning March, Macau will increase its monthly quota of one-way permit holders from the mainland to 280. Under its Basic Law, all children of Macau Chinese residents have the right of abode, including those born outside of the territory. There are "several thousand" children in the mainland who are estimated as having the right of abode in Macau. The 31st Sino-Portuguese Joint Liaison Meeting decided that China will recognize Portuguese aliens’ passports held by Macau residents until 20 December 2001. Some 70,000 Macau residents hold such passports and almost all of them are immigrants from the mainland and their children. Another 120,000 Macau residents are holders of Portuguese national passports, and Portugal has promised to honor Portuguese national passports beyond 1999.

Some changes in China’s internal migration became evident in 1998. The legendary 70-100 million floating population reportedly went down because of the construction slump and competition from laid-off urban workers. However, this trend might be temporary in view of the relaxation of residency rules which had kept urban migration in check in the past 40 years. As of 6 September, the new household registration system allows long-term city residents (particularly, the spouses of city-based partners) and business or property owners in cities (including their families) to become legal residents. Meanwhile, in the countryside, noting the deforestation of the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Prof. Kang Xiaoguang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences recommended massive migration projects to move people from the upper Yangtze River to another location.