While the country has become older, more urbanized, and wealthier, it struggles to rebalance economic needs and political considerations. With the post-1979 reform policies, China developed from a country of limited migration into one in many ways defined through its global interactions, although it continues to treat migration warily. After 1949, controlling migration was a key concern for the Chinese government. Throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China, migration has been managed for selective developmental aims and often in service of broader geopolitical goals. This article discusses trends in China’s international mobility, particularly amid the economic reforms of the last four decades. Despite China’s looming demographic crisis, there is also little long-term planning for future immigration that might be needed to offset consequences of population aging. Pathways for permanent residence remain extremely limited. For immigrants and returning migrants, there has been a narrow focus on migration’s economic benefits, while broader questions of integration and societal diversity remain unaddressed. Because of lingering political sensitivity around international mobility, legal and institutional frameworks for managing migration have lagged. The strict border-control measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were illustrative of this tension. Still, international mobility has retained an ambiguous position in the nation-building project, which has been defined around China’s self-sufficiency. In this post-1979 reform era, the government has managed migration by focusing on supporting China’s development.
Almost one-third of these immigrants live in the southern province of Guangdong, the manufacturing powerhouse where Deng Xiaoping launched China’s economic reforms policies. The 2020 census counted 1.4 million overseas residents ( jingwai renyuan) in mainland China-which is sizable in absolute terms but accounts for just 0.1 percent of the total population-including 846,000 foreign nationals and 585,000 residents of Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, although these are underestimates that fail to capture people in irregular status. South Korea, the United States, and Japan are key migrant source countries, but China’s position as an economic hub increasingly attracts migrants from around the globe, including traders and students from the global South. The Chinese government has sought to maintain ties with these “new” migrants, as they are called to differentiate from those who emigrated in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and has in recent years also emphasized linkages with the wider diaspora, which has been estimated at between 35 million and 50 million.Īs China’s development took off, the country also has attracted growing numbers of foreign-born migrants and has emerged as an immigrant destination country, particularly following its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001.
An estimated 10.5 million Chinese citizens lived abroad as of 2020, according to United Nations estimates.
Teambition move from international to china registration#
Yet the scale of China’s internal migration remains unmatched: in the 2020 census, nearly 376 million people lived someplace other than their household registration area, a group often referred to as the “floating population.”Ĭhina experienced an “emigration craze” after the 1990s, during which millions of people moved abroad. China officially became an aging nation in 2000, and the working-age population has peaked in 2020, about 19 percent of its 1.4 billion citizens were over 60, the retirement age. The story of China’s mobility boom starts at home, with millions of internal migrants moving from the country’s rural interior to the coastal areas, where they have contributed to the country’s urbanization and export-driven manufacturing growth. Previous decades had been marked by the state’s control of international movement, but global mobility gradually became more accessible in the late 20th century and the new millennium. After China’s leaders in 1979 identified global economic integration as a key target, many of its citizens moved abroad in search of better economic opportunities. The increase in migration to and from the country is deeply intertwined with its history of socioeconomic reforms. In 2019, the 350 million border crossings by mainland citizens and 98 million by foreign nationals again reached record highs, continuing a decades-long upward climb interrupted only by China’s strict border-control measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As China has developed into a global power, it has also increasingly become a nation of people on the move.
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