Page 2 of 2 CHINA'S THIRD
WAVE, Part 1 A new
breed of migrants fans out By
Bertil Lintner
migrants with regard
to the local population, officials in Myanmar are
reluctant to enforce immigration laws. Indeed, a
well-known Burmese novelist, Nyi Pu Lay, was even
arrested as early as 1990 - when the first groups
of Chinese began to pour into Mandalay - and
sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for writing a
story called "The Python", a satire on Chinese
settlers moving into the city and squeezing out
the local Burmese.
Myanmar's old Chinese
communities - mostly of Fujianese
and
Cantonese origin - feel
uncomfortable with this renewed racial tension;
older Sino-Burmese remember how mobs ran amok in
Yangon's Chinatown in 1967, burning and plundering
Chinese shops at a time the country was in deep
economic crisis.
New-age diaspora So what drives this new Chinese diaspora? Chin
Ko-lin, a Myanmar-born Chinese who is currently a
professor at the School of Criminal Justice at
Rutgers University in the United States, says the
exodus stems from policy changes in China after
1978, when Washington and Beijing reestablished
diplomatic relations. To qualify for
most-favored-nation status, China relaxed
emigration regulations in 1979, and the flow of
migrants began.
"And beginning in the
later 1980s, some of those who did not have
legitimate channels to emigrate began turning to
human smugglers for help," Chin explains. Thus,
the movement of people out of China became a
partly criminal and highly profitable enterprise.
In the 1980s, China's so-called economic "reform
and opening up" program under Deng Xiaoping paved
the way for Chinese to seek business opportunities
abroad.
The shift from people's communes
to private agriculture, massive lay-offs at
state-owned enterprises and rapid
industrialization in coastal provinces all led to
dislocation and more migration. And the migrants
soon discovered ingenious ways to avoid official
immigration rules and regulations both at home and
abroad. If land borders and airports were well
guarded, the migrants took to boats; if
coastguards stepped up patrols, the migrants
entered by air.
Back-door routes were
found and multiplied. One example: would-be
migrants trekked overland to Thailand, flew from
Bangkok to Bucharest, Romania - the cheapest
airfare to Europe - then slipped unnoticed into
nearby European Union countries. This month,
Romania, a new European Union member, started
importing Chinese workers to resolve severe labor
shortages in its textile industry. Others were
smuggled into the outlying US territories of Guam,
the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico, where controls
are less stringent than on the US mainland.
While exact figures, of course, are not
available, Western intelligence officials believe
that nearly 2 million Chinese have migrated
legally and illegally since 1978, and the outward
human flow continues. They estimate that
30,000-40,000 a year make their way to the US, and
the same number throughout the rest of the world.
Chin and other experts on Chinese migration say
this is the third time in Chinese history that
such a massive exodus has taken place.
The
first wave, they say, came after the fall of the
Ming dynasty in 1644 and consisted mostly of
non-Mandarin speaking southerners who opposed the
Manchu seizure of power in Beijing. These migrants
established overseas Chinese communities all over
Southeast Asia, which now control large swathes of
the region's economy and means of production.
The next wave came after the Taiping
rebellion and other upheavals in the mid and late
19th century as the Manchu Qing dynasty crumbled
and warlords tore the country into lawless
fiefdoms. Not only did the migrants - again mainly
from the southern coastal provinces - swell the
existing Chinese communities in Southeast Asia,
but newly invented steamships took them to North
America and Australia.
Nationalistic
migrants Now, Forbes notes, the "Third
Wave" migrants have come from all over China.
Better overland routes have led to a steady
movement of Chinese to Southeast Asia - and air
travel makes it easier for them to go anywhere in
the world. He argues that Chinese migration may
actually have a more profound economic and social
impact on the countries they settle in than was
the case in the past.
In Japan, for
instance, Chinese newcomers who have been smuggled
into the country now by far outnumber the small
communities of Chinese who have been living for
generations in Yokohama, Kobe and other port
cities. Chinese human traffickers, widely known as
snakeheads, are making fortunes bringing in
illegal immigrants from China by boat, air, or
posing as "students" through dodgy educational
exchange programs.
Because of Japan's
strict labor laws, many of the newcomers have
little choice but to work in bars and night clubs,
which are often controlled by organized crime
gangs. Now, ethnic Chinese gangs have even begun
to challenge the yakuza, Japan's own
powerful organized crime syndicates. Fierce
rivalries between gangsters from Shanghai, Fujian
and Beijing have erupted into shoot-outs in the
usually peaceful cities of Tokyo and Osaka.
This strong "Chineseness" of the new wave
of migrants could lead to demographic changes in
the countries and territories to which they have
moved.
A Chinese immigrant in the United
States may become a "Chinese-American" and a
Chinese in Australia an "Australian-Chinese". But
Chinese migrants to the Russian Far East - where
Chinese influence is growing rapidly - are
unlikely to become "Russian Chinese". That is,
their identification will remain with China, not
Russia. Likewise, Chinese who migrate to smaller
Pacific island nations such as Tonga and the
Marshall Islands will also remain Chinese, with
little or no loyalty to their new countries of
residence.
In many ways, this is not an
unprecedented development. In the 18th and 19th
centuries, Europeans migrated in large numbers to
other continents, which led to the formation of
the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand
and other new countries. The Chinese are not
reaching out to establish colonies, but, if they
begin to outnumber the native population in areas
such as the Russian Far East and the Pacific
islands, it will inevitably lead to entirely new
ethnic, social and political structures in those
territories. And even where they form only a
powerful minority, their political influence will
be considerable and a factor to be reckoned with.
The "Third Wave" of Chinese migration has
already helped to strengthen China's influence,
especially among its nearby neighbors. Myanmar and
Laos have established close economic and even
military ties with China. Trade between Thailand
and China is booming, and so are cultural and
political exchanges. China is Cambodia's closest
foreign ally, and a growing source of aid, trade
and migration. China's influence in the Pacific is
growing at the expense of America's. Intentionally
or not, the large-scale migration of its people is
reinforcing China's emergence as a big - and
global - power.
PART 2: The
Sinicizing of the South Pacific
Bertil Lintner is a former
correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic Review
and is currently a writer with Asia-Pacific Media
Services. This series of articles is part of a
larger research project conducted with support
from the John D and Catherine T MacArthur
Foundation.
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