Immigration With Chinese Characteristics
Udumbara
China has restrictive laws—administered and enforced by multiple bureaucracies—affecting migrants and immigrants.
The focus of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is largely on carefully managing and surveilling all immigrants and migrants to ensure conformance with the regime’s policies, laws, and regulations, as well as to monitor and control dissent and limit (if not prevent) espionage. Internal Chinese migration is managed through the hukou system of household registration, while immigration to China is controlled under the Exit and Entry Administration Law.
Domestic Migration Management and Control
The CCP established the hukou system in 1958, in general terms, “to control population movement and facilitate the implementation of central economic planning.”Specifically, this has evolved into controlling, managing, and apportioning the rights, benefits, and especially the mobility of all Chinese residents as relates to public social services, access to schools, job opportunities, and other important aspects of daily life.
The establishment of the two main hukou classifications—rural and urban—led to great income disparities and social inequality, as benefits heavily accrued to those Chinese lucky enough to be born in urban areas and to break the chains restricting mobility under the hukou system.
As a result, largely rural domestic Chinese economic migrants seeking greater economic opportunities in urban areas have evolved over the years into a “floating population.” That floating population totaled 286 million people in 2020, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics, accounting for 20 percent of the country’s total population.
This migrant population is monitored through annual China Migrants Dynamic Surveys, administered by China’s National Health Commission. The surveys collect data on Chinese individuals who do not have a local hukou (i.e., are floaters) for the purpose of adjusting CCP policies and reapportioning public services.
The movements of the floating population are controlled by local governments that carefully manage inflows to their areas through policies requiring proof of employment and obtaining residency permits. Local security apparatuses use sophisticated digital surveillance tools, identity cards, big data systems, and now AI to monitor and track migrants’ movements and their compliance with local laws and regulations.
This is the ground-level foundation for China’s comprehensive mass surveillance and social controls system. It includes over 600 million surveillance cameras backed by Skynet and Sharp Eyes (for facial recognition, big data analysis, and AI integration), social credit scoring (for reward/punishment), internet monitoring (for social media and internet controls via the Great Firewall—Golden Shield), and “grassroots monitoring.” That grassroots monitoring is done by an estimated 15 million local spies and informants, reporting to possibly as many as 100,000 local members of the Ministry of Public Security’s Domestic Security Protection units.
Chinese Immigration Law
China’s immigration laws are equally restrictive, onerous, and coercive. The Exit and Entry Administration Law of the People’s Republic of China was adopted in 2012 by the Standing Committee of the 11th National People’s Congress and went into effect on July 1, 2013. Not coincidentally, this law was one of the first implemented by Xi Jinping upon his confirmation as the CCP’s leader by the 12th National People’s Congress in March 2013, as part of his renewed focus on all aspects of Chinese security and “rejuvenation.”From Article 1, the law’s purpose is “to regulate exit/entry administration, safeguard the sovereignty, security and social order of the People’s Republic of China, and promote foreign exchanges and opening to the outside world.”
What is the reality of those lofty goals? The grey area for foreigners is Article 3, which states: “Foreigners in China shall abide by the Chinese laws, and shall not endanger China’s national security, harm public interests and disrupt social and public order.”
While the law is generally administered by the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Article 3 is used by the Ministry of State Security (MSS), in conjunction with the aforementioned domestic mass surveillance system, for the purposes of intelligence collection and counterespionage.
In this system, bureaucratic conflicts are a feature, not a bug.
The MSS focuses on foreigners suspected of espionage, subversion, political activism, holding illegal gatherings, and any activities considered harmful to state interests (i.e., harmful to the CCP). Interpretation of the Article 3 is highly subjective, and the following activities can and have been targeted by the MSS over the years: people-to-people contacts through cultural and educational exchanges, foreigners involved in NGO and other non-profit work, academic research or independent journalism, religious activities and “illegal” gatherings, “questionable” online activities, and even simple photography in areas deemed sensitive by the CCP.
Concluding Thoughts
Xi Jinping’s long-stated policy of “opening China to the world” has apparently not been applied by CCP bureaucracies to foreign immigration. As of 2018, according to the South China Morning Post, there were a paltry 12,000 foreigners holding permanent residency in China. Chinese state media Global Times reported that another 711,000 held temporary residency visas (nominally for work or school) in 2023, as reported by the National Immigration Administration.In comparison, in the United States, there were 12.8 million lawful permanent residents—green card holders—as of Jan. 1, 2024, according to the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.
Furthermore, according to the Migration Policy Institute, the U.S. State Dept also issued 1.3 million employment-based temporary visas and 10.4 million student visas in 2023 alone.
