Immigration News: October, 2004 - Volume 11

China, Hong Kong, Taiwan

Migration. China "officially" has 114 million internal migrant workers who moved from rural to urban areas, and their number is projected to rise to 300 million by 2020. Shanghai has three million migrant workers; by comparison, the entire Irish migration to America from 1820 to 1930 involved perhaps 4.5 million people.

The "largest movement in human history" has given China's cities male construction and female factory workers, but at costs that might spark protests. Most internal migrants do not have full access to housing and schools where they live, which is one reason they maintain links to their villages of origin, remitting $45 billion in 2003. As the household registration system is further loosened, an additional seven to 10 million migrants are expected to join the rural-urban trek, and to try to integrate the migrants, Shanghai has begun to issue local resident cards to migrants with jobs for 25 yuan.

Some 600,000 Chinese have left to pursue higher education since 1980, and an estimated 75 percent remain abroad, according to the Los Angeles Times on August 8, 2004. The number of Chinese traveling abroad as tourists is rising rapidly, and is projected to be 100 million by 2020, which would make China the number four source of international tourists, after Germany, Japan and the US.

Few foreigners have applied for China's 'green card'- a 10-year residency visa for those who meet certain criteria. Those eligible to apply include the foreign spouses and immediate family of Chinese citizens, experts with skills in high demand and investors with US$2 million - or $500,000 if they are investing in a project that alleviates poverty. By contrast, under the Capital Investment Entrant Scheme in Hong Kong, foreign applicants willing to invest HK$6.5 million in property, the stock market or bonds will be granted right of abode if they live in Hong Kong for seven years.

Demography. China is weighing an overhaul of its controversial "one-child" family-planning policies, in part because of their harsh implementation at local levels, where government officials can levy heavy fines or require abortions and sterilizations for having too many children. China, with 1.3 billion people, saw fertility fall from almost six children per woman in 1970 to about 1.8 in 2000. Most rural couples, where two-thirds of Chinese live, are allowed to have two children.

One reason for allowing more children is that China is an aging society facing a social security problem; social security currently covers only urban workers. In 1997, the Chinese government unified the basic old-age insurance system for urban workers by implementing a social-pool-plus-personal-accounts scheme. Under the current program covering 155 million workers, men can retire at 60, and women at 50, if they have paid premiums for at least 15 years. Recipients receive an average 621 yuan (US$74) a month in 2003.

The share of Chinese aged 60 and older is projected to rise from 11 percent today to 28 percent by 2040, and there may be too few taxpayers to support these retirees if fertility stays low. Many social scientists argue that loosening the one-child policy would lead to an increase but not a surge in births, and they recommend allowing two children beginning in the coastal cities that have experienced the most economic growth.

Economy. Chinese factories in the southeast are complaining of labor shortages, a result of rising rural incomes and rising urban living costs that make it less advantageous to move from farms to cities. The Pearl River Delta, which produces many of the world's shoes and electronics, has an estimated shortage of two million workers, which is encouraging some firms to raise wages above the minimum $85 a month. A few companies have gone further, raising wages to $125 a month and no longer supplying dormitory housing to young women from the countryside. Factories that depend on low wages are making two adjustments. Some are moving inland, where wages are lower, and others are moving to lower wage countries such as Vietnam.

China has become a net food importer, on track to import food worth $29 billion and export food worth $22 billion in 2004. However, falling water tables, drying rivers and polluted water sources promise to turn China into the world's biggest food importer within a decade; the amount of farm land has fallen to 123 million hectares.

On the World Bank's list of 20 cities with the most polluted air, 16 are Chinese. Urban residents with rising incomes are demanding cleaner air, leading to anti-pollution efforts in Beijing and Shanghai, hosts of the 2008 Olympics. China has 166 cities with populations over one million, compared with nine in the United States, and China's urban population is growing 2.5 percent a year.

However, in rural areas, pollution is widespread, as factories sheltered by local officials continue to dump waste into local waterways. Elizabeth C. Economy, author of "The River Runs Black" (Cornell University Press, 2004), says that rural areas lack effective anti-pollution movements, in part because large factories are often controlled indirectly by the governments that are supposed to regulate them.

China has become the largest single source of tourists in Asia, surpassing Japan, and China has also become Asia's number one tourist destination.

Hong Kong. Many Hong Kong families have foreign domestic helpers, who must be paid at least HK$ 3,270 a month. However, most families find maids through agents, and the agents often collect fees from both the families and the maids. The Hong Kong government set up a task force in 2003 to deal with complaints of employer and agent abuse of maids, but in its first 18 months, only five of 100 agents charged with overcharging had their licenses revoked.

Taiwan. The Council of Labor Affairs in July 2004 proposed that the 300,000 migrant workers set up accounts with selected banks to which employers would deposit their salaries, and banks would pay broker fees from worker accounts. The goal of the system is to reduce unlawful high brokerage fees- many migrants arrive in debt to brokers, and run away from employers who divert part of their earnings to repay broker fees. Under the new plan, a NT$3,000 a month deduction would be made from migrant earnings and deposited in the account during the migrant's first year, and refunded to the migrant in her country of origin after her return (the maximum stay in Taiwan is six years).

Most migrants pay broker fees of NT$120,000, half to home country and half to Taiwan brokers, for three-year contracts that pay NT$15,480 a month, or a total of NT$557,280. This means that migrants must work eight months to repay brokers, which prompts many to run away, accepting lower wages as illegal workers, but escaping broker fees. As of June 2004, some 13,600 migrants had run away; most were Vietnamese admitted to be caregivers for the elderly or the disabled. About 62,000 of the 81,000 Vietnamese in Taiwan are caregivers.

The Taiwan International Workers' Association is skeptical, saying that the new bank accounts permit loans, and that migrants could be forced to take out loans whose beneficiary is their broker. Forced savings would not eliminate the problem of brokers forcing migrants to sign private loan agreements that increase the fees they owe brokers after their arrival.

Max Woodworth, "Migrants face down finance proposal," Taipei Times, September 26, 2004. Chan Siu-sin and Eva Woo, "Few takers so far for new 10-year 'green cards,'" South China Morning Post, August 27, 2004. John M. Glionna, "Some 'Sea Turtles' Find Foreign Degrees Don't Float in China," Los Angeles Times, August 8, 2004.