Emigration Trends and Policies in China: Movement of the Wealthy and Highly Skilled
China has become one of the world’s leading source countries of migrants—a result of market-oriented reforms beginning in the 1970s that reduced barriers to emigration. But the migration picture is a divergent one: High-skilled emigration is rising fast, while low-skilled migration has been bogged down by increasingly detailed regulations that serve to slow the recruitment process for unskilled and low-skilled Chinese workers seeking to go abroad.
As the Chinese New Year begins, a new report from University of Oxford anthropologist Biao Xiang, Emigration Trends and Policies in China: Movement of the Wealthy and Highly Skilled, analyzes the evolution of Chinese emigration since the end of the 1970s to the present day.
Current trends mark a reversal of old patterns. Before 1949, Chinese emigration was primarily composed of low-skilled or unskilled migrants. Today, wealthy elites and the growing middle class are increasingly pursuing educational and work opportunities overseas for themselves and their families, facilitated by their rising incomes. In response, the Chinese government has launched a variety of initiatives to engage and connect with its diaspora members, without necessarily expecting their permanent return.
This report is the sixth in a series from the Migration Policy Institute’s Transatlantic Council on Migration focused on the scale and implications of the emigration of talented young people and the concrete actions governments and societies can take to mitigate the costs of emigration and capture more of its potential benefits. Earlier reports in the series can be read here.
KJ