Chinese Abroad Chinese Abroad

Issue: Chinese Abroad

Chinese Abroad

By: Suzanne Sataline

Pub. Date: May 22, 2017 Access Date: September 28, 2021 DOI: 10.1177/237455680315.n3 Source URL: http://businessresearcher.sagepub.com/sbr-1863-102785-2783954/20170522/chinese-abroad ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Can Beijing stem the brain drain? Executive Summary

Since 1978, when China’s government introduced major economic changes and lifted a ban on emigration, about 10 million Chinese nationals have moved abroad. More than 2 million of these emigres live in the United States. The outflow has created a brain drain, and amounts to a vote of no confidence by emigres in Chinese society. Experts say Chinese parents are sending their children at increasingly younger ages to school in the West. They also are seeking economic opportunities and societies where the rule of law guarantees that their wealth will be protected. Yet many Chinese citizens will return home because they cannot obtain permanent visas and because China’s dynamic economy still offers opportunity. Some key takeaways: The United States has wooed wealthy Chinese with investment and visa opportunities, and recent arrivals have contributed to the U.S. economy, although critics say some U.S. immigration programs invite corruption and pose security concerns. China has moved to stem the outflow by instituting educational reforms, restricting foreign-currency purchases and seeking to attract emigres back home. Chinese overseas nationals sent more than $16.2 billion home in 2015, the second highest total in the world after remittances from Mexican citizens. Full Report

Chinese student Helen Zhou heads to school at Linfield Christian School in Temecula, Calif. The desire for more educational choice and quality is a key driver of Chinese immigration. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

Ken Yan’s future lies not in his birthplace of Jiangxi province in China, but 7,000 miles away, in Southern California. When the 11-year-old arrived in Laguna Niguel in August, he didn’t speak English and had never met the host family his parents had found for him. Still, his father, Sam Yan, knew that sending Ken to the United States was the right decision. “U.S. education is better,” he said, adding that schools in the United States promote independent thinking and don’t pressure students with the high- stakes testing environment that exists in China. 1 The United States, Ken’s parents decided, offered more opportunity. They even bought investment property in Irvine, Calif., a community that attracts many of their compatriots. 2 Since 1978, when China’s government instituted major economic policy changes and reversed a near-ban on overseas emigration, about 10 million Chinese nationals have moved abroad. 3 Since 2001, more than 1 million have become citizens of other countries, most often the United States, but also Canada and Australia.

Chinese citizens leave their homeland to study, to earn more money or to make hefty investments in countries that promise speedy citizenship in return. 4 In 2013, China replaced Mexico as the top country of origin among U.S. legal immigrants. 5 More than 2 million Chinese-born nationals live in the United States, and nearly half have become citizens. About 30 percent of those 2 million arrived after 2009. 6 “As China has developed, Chinese leave,” says Ronald Skeldon, professor emeritus at the University of Sussex in England. “There are hundreds of thousands of Chinese students around the world. This is part of development. It’s China’s participation in a global economy.” While Chinese have lived abroad for centuries, members of the current migration represent some of the country’s best-educated and wealthiest. Their departure has created a brain drain of citizens dissatisfied with the government, schools and environment who are searching for ways to protect their wealth, their children’s health, and their rights, scholars say. The United States has wooed wealthy Chinese with investment and visa opportunities, and recent arrivals have contributed to the U.S. economy, even as some immigration programs have been criticized as inviting corruption and security concerns. What spurs this run for the border? Middle-class families in China, social scientists say, want a greater choice of quality schools and colleges, with more varied curricula, where admissions aren’t based on grueling yearly tests. After years of living with the consequences of rapid growth – including severe pollution – in a country of 1.4 billion people, many Chinese want to send their children to places with clean water and air. Chinese families want higher living standards, a stable economy and legal protections for their bank accounts and investments. “Number one is that many are seeking a more politically stable environment,” says Yong Zhao, an education professor at the University of Kansas who studies Chinese schools. “When you’ve made so much money, you want to park your money in a stable society. Many Chinese people remember a time that the Chinese government can seize your property.” Schooling is a major factor. “Many are looking to pass on money through education,” Zhao says. “Many believe the West – U.S., Canada, Australia – has better education. It’s more like an investment.” A survey by the Shanghai research firm Hurun Report found that 64 percent of China’s wealthy – those with assets greater than $1.6 million – are emigrating, or plan to. 7 That amounts to a no-confidence vote in China’s leadership, some scholars say. As part of its response, the government has rolled out a series of changes to its college entrance process that will create an American-style admissions system, says Zhao. Economic uncertainty may create another incentive to leave. After nearly a decade of double-digit growth, China’s economy has slowed, perhaps even more than government officials have been willing to admit. 8 China’s aggregate debt load, one of the world’s largest, amounts to $21,600 in bank loans, bonds and other liabilities for each citizen. 9 To keep money from fleeing, China imposed new restrictions on foreign currency purchases this year after an estimated $762 billion left the country in the first 11 months of 2016. Chinese nationals pumped some of that money into residential real estate in cities such as Vancouver and Sydney. 10 “Talent and money is leaving the country. That’s bad for Chinese society,” says Derek Scissors, an economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington. “These are people who contribute to the economy in different ways, and you don’t want them leaving.” China also has taken steps to retain and expand its intellectual capital. In 2008, it created a program with pay and living benefits incentives to lure home scientists, technologists and financial experts. 11 (The program struggled to attract many candidates and cases of fraud, including money getting diverted for questionable purposes, were later found. 12 ) Tech innovation centers are surging, and technology companies in China are working to attract talent from the United States. 13 In at least one case, a major tech company offered cash and stock options to Chinese nationals willing to return. 14 Recent surveys show investors are increasingly deciding to stay in China, and more students who moved abroad are going back. 15 Most International Students Come From China

More than 320,000 in United States in 2015-16

Source: “Leading Places of Origin,” Institute of International Education, http://tinyurl.com/mpwyvjt

Almost one-third of the foreign students in the United States originated from China in the 2015-16 academic year, the most from any country. More than 320,000 Chinese students were in the United States that year.

Specifics on how many Chinese citizens leave the country are hard to come by because China’s authoritarian government tightly controls such information. One sociologist estimated that in 2011, more than 40.3 million Chinese lived in 148 other countries or jurisdictions, including Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. 16 Official estimates published by the United Nations show that 9.8 million Chinese nationals live outside the country. 17 Many social scientists regard those numbers as low. 18 China gains from its overseas nationals, who worldwide sent more than $16.2 billion back home in 2015, according to World Bank estimates. 19 Only Mexico received more money from its citizens living abroad. Remittances from Mexicans totaled more than $24 billion in 2015. 20 President Trump’s election might discourage some Chinese citizens from moving to the United States. 21 Certainly, his anti-immigration rhetoric and his criticism of China’s trade practices on the campaign trail made some feel nervous, immigration attorneys say. Still, Trump and his talk won’t dissuade most Chinese keen on an American life, scholars say. Some demographic experts caution that not all Chinese citizens who leave their homeland stay away for good. Many wealthy Chinese split their time between their native country, where they work, and a home abroad – often in North America or Australia – where their families live. 22 Such family dynamics have long existed in China, says Huei-Ying Kuo, a sociologist and researcher with Johns Hopkins University. Why do Chinese citizens move abroad?

Wealth

Chinese have seen their wealth grow at an astonishing speed. In 2000, 5 million households earned between $11,500 and $43,000 a year in 2016 dollars, according to The Economist. 23 By 2016, 225 million people earned that. McKinsey & Company, a New York-based global management consulting firm with clients in Asia and elsewhere, estimates that by 2020, that number will grow by 50 million households. 24 Many teens in China, born before the government ended its one-child policy in 2016, have grown up in an era of relative wealth and an array of life choices. 25 Upper-middle-class Chinese, in addition to avidly buying electronics and luxury items, seek cars, enrichment programs, overseas travel and foreign schools for their children. 26 In recent years, wealthy Chinese nationals have swamped the market for luxury buildings in New York, Miami and London and are snapping up property in Southern California’s wine-producing region. 27 Those purchasers include corrupt government officials who may have stolen as much as $123 billion from the country since the mid-1990s, according to the Chinese central bank. 28

Job Conditions

Many Chinese workers, including construction laborers, have lost their jobs because of a slowing domestic economy, rising costs and stiffer foreign competition from other Asian countries and the United States. 29 Some Chinese workers have left the country to seek jobs in Africa and Latin America where they build ports and infrastructure, says Howard J. Shatz, a senior economist at the RAND Corp., a nonprofit research institution.

Education

Rising incomes, a respect for foreign education, and frustration with China’s brutally competitive education system have prompted many Chinese students to seek degrees abroad. Nearly 329,000 enrolled in U.S. programs in 2015, more than the combined number from India, Saudi Arabia and South Korea, which rank closest to China in the category. 30 Most Chinese students are undergraduates majoring in business and management. 31 And they are younger than their counterparts from decades ago. The number of Chinese who come to the United States to attend high school, even primary school, is growing fast. 32 Those numbers stand in stark contrast to those in the 1980s and 1990s, when most Chinese students in the United States enrolled in graduate school. In 2005, just 641 Chinese students enrolled in U.S. high schools. By 2014, that number was approaching 40,000 and accounted for nearly half of all international high-school students in the United States. 33 Fifty-seven percent of Chinese parents report they would send their child overseas to study if they could afford it, according to the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. 34 That percentage reflects Chinese frustration with a system that spends years preparing children for the gaokao, a brutal, all-day college entrance examination, but downplays creative thinking. How students perform on the national exam determines which colleges they may apply to, says Zhao of the University of Kansas. Students are limited to the majors offered by those colleges, which restricts their career options and employment prospects. “The Chinese system is not a fair system,” Zhao says. “The Chinese people and the Chinese government recognize this. It may be horrible for future society. It does not have the diversity of talents that the society needs.” Zhao says China’s government has attempted to fix the system by offering a more American-style college admission system that tests students’ knowledge of math, Chinese, English and three other subjects that each student may choose. The changes, being tested as part of a pilot program, also factor in students’ performance in their final year of high school. 35 Students who perform poorly on tests or desire a broader liberal arts education are increasingly enrolling in preparatory or high schools abroad or cramming for Western standardized tests. 36 Many leave China for good. Of the 4 million Chinese who have left to study abroad since 1978, half have not returned, according to the Ministry of Education. 37 In some fields, the brain drain is severe: Nearly all of China’s best science students pursue their PhDs abroad, and 85 percent of Chinese science and engineering graduates with PhDs from the United States had not returned to China five years after they left, a 2016 study by the U.S. National Science Foundation found. 38 Those who do return home are known in China as haigui – or “sea turtles” – and there is some evidence that their numbers are on the rise. About 80 percent have come back in recent years, compared with about one-third in 2006, according to the Education Ministry. 39

A woman wears a mask to protect herself against poor air quality in Beijing. Environmental problems are a spur to immigration. (Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty Images)

Yingyi Ma, an associate sociology professor at Syracuse University who is writing a book about the current crop of Chinese students overseas, says, “My sense is, compared to earlier cohorts of students, this new wave intends to return to China.” Competition for a scarce number of permanent work visas in the United States forces many Chinese students to leave a year or two after graduation. Many budding Chinese entrepreneurs have also struggled to obtain the necessary visas. China is trying to cultivate that desire to create one’s own work, Ma says, with new programs and grants in hopes of drawing the tech-savvy to Silicon Valley-like work hubs.

Environment

China’s environmental problems are not just a health problem, but a social issue that is spurring the drive to leave. Pollutants have caused asthma to surge, destroyed waterways and ruined soil. 40 Air quality in major cities, choked in carbon emissions, routinely falls below international health standards. 41 Coal burning for heat, cooking, and electricity generation, vehicle emissions and airborne dusts are widely considered the main sources of both tiny hazardous airborne particles called PM2.5 and other pollutants. 42 China is the world’s largest source of carbon emissions. The air quality of many of its major cities fails to meet international health standards. 43 Life expectancy for people living north of the Huai River is 5.5 years below that of residents in the south because of the air pollution. 44 Some studies estimate that 1 million people a year die early, while other studies put the number at 300,000 to 500,000. 45 Under strong pressure from the public, Beijing officials have taken steps to address the problem. China is tracking its violations and publishing its air quality numbers, part of a plan to cut the most serious airborne particulates by 2020. 46 In 2013, China’s government pledged to cut coal consumption and shrink PM2.5 levels up to 25 percent by 2020. Thousands of polluting factories were shut down, particularly in north China. 47 The government also vowed to spend $275 billion in the coming years to clean up the air, and to spend $333 billion addressing water pollution. 48 Fears of lowered life expectancies and serious pollution-related diseases fill discussion boards on China’s online chat platforms and drive large protests in some cities. 49 In recent years, children have been confined to their homes, especially during the winter, and schools have canceled outdoor recess to protect children. 50

Corruption

Bribing government officials in China – to get deals, contracts, even permits -- has been routine in China for decades, but President Xi Jinping’s anti- corruption drives make it a highly risky practice for business owners. 51 “There’s always a fear that, if the officials to whom they’re tied are brought down in an anti-corruption campaign, it could bring trouble for them, too, and lead to the seizure of their assets,” said John Osburg, an anthropologist at the University of Rochester. “There’s also a concern that business rivals who may be better connected to people in the government could use their ties to the party-state to bring down their competitors.” 52 Wealthy Chinese have tired of a system where one needs guanxi, or connections. 53 China is essentially a one-party state where courts are influenced by the country’s legislature, so there’s no mechanism for seeking justice or change. Instead, many affluent citizens opt to move to the United States, Canada or Australia, where they believe their assets will be protected, Osburg says. 54

Implications for the United States

The United States has benefitted financially from the influx of Chinese nationals and their money. Students from China contributed $11.4 billion to the U.S. economy in 2015, according to the Department of Commerce. 55 Demand for H-1B visas, which allow skilled personnel to work at U.S. companies for three years – primarily technology companies – far exceeds supply. Demand is so great that the U.S. government closes the annual window for applying within days of its opening. 56 More than 21,000 Chinese nationals received one of the visas during fiscal 2016, which began in October 2015. 57 Foreign nationals who don’t acquire a visa through their employer sometimes try to get one through conglomerates that hire overseas nationals and provide many tech workers. 58 Some must leave for another country or go home. To stake a claim in America, wealthy Chinese have acquired U.S. companies, started new businesses and purchased land. As that spending mounts, so have questions about corruption, Chinese government influence and whether Washington is selling one of its most precious privileges – citizenship. Cumulative Chinese direct investment in the U.S. economy since 2000 now exceeds $100 billion. 59 This has made America the largest recipient of Chinese outbound capital. 60 As of the close of 2016, Chinese-affiliated operations in America numbered more than 3,200 and employed more than 140,000 people, a 46 percent increase from 2015, according to research by the Rhodium Group, a New York-based research consultancy. Those jobs include 6,000 in Louisville, Ky., where Chinese appliances giant Haier acquired General Electric’s appliances division last year. 61 Yingyi Ma: “This new wave Other companies purchased by Chinese buyers include Starwood Hotels and AMC Entertainment Holdings. 62 intends to return.” Chinese nationals also have invested in commercial real estate, hotels and business services, including Sotheby’s auction house, in the United States. 63 In addition, Chinese companies are building or planning manufacturing projects. 64

Many wealthy Chinese have been enticed to spend their money through a U.S. immigration program that offers permanent residency and a path to citizenship. But critics say the program has promoted fraud and abuse. The EB-5 visa, designed to entice the rich to invest in the United States, offers green cards to foreigners who spend at least $500,000 on a U.S. business and generate at least 10 jobs in America. In 2015, 93 percent of the more than 9,700 EB-5 visas used went to Asian investors. Of the total, 84 percent went to investors from China. 65 Some members of Congress have called for an end to the program, which has benefited about 44,000 foreign nationals and their relatives. 67 They cite a Government Accountability Office report from September 2016 that found the Department of Homeland Security had been overwhelmed by the volume of paperwork that needed to be reviewed to vet EB-5 applicants to guard against fraud. 68 In 2015, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil fraud charges against a Chinese businesswoman and her company based on evidence that after raising more than $8 million, the woman spent nearly $1 million buying gifts for herself, including a boat and two luxury cars. 69 Despite the criticisms, Trump signed a law in May that renewed the investor visa. Hours later, representatives of the company run until January by Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were in China, asking potential investors to pour $500,000 into two luxury New Jersey apartments owned by Kushner Companies. 70 Kushner was mentioned during the presentation, according to an account by The New York Times; critics called it a conflict of interest for the White House, which the administration denied. 71 Chinese investment has profoundly affected the U.S. real estate market, sending home prices soaring in San Francisco, Manhattan and Silicon Valley. Chinese buyers, including those from Taiwan and Hong Kong, pay an average $831,800 for a home, more than three times what Americans spend, according to a National Association of Realtors survey. 72 One of those buyers, Eric Du, a management and investment consultant from Beijing, paid cash for a townhouse and two other homes in the Chicago suburb of Northbrook, Ill., over a two-year period. He said he plans to raise his children in one, offering them cleaner air and better schools than back home, while leasing the other two properties. Back in China, “The price of property in Beijing is very high, the stock market is crashing, and the real economy is not stable,” Du told The New York Times. 73

Implications for China

The flight of students from China has prompted Beijing to invest heavily to make its higher-education system more attractive and globally competitive. Since 2000, the number of postsecondary schools in China has more than doubled to 2,529, which officials hope will expand the country’s skilled workforce. 74 In 2015, 7.5 million students graduated, almost eight times as many as in 2000. The government also has said it is “actively encouraging study-abroad students to return home and serve the nation.” 75 Chinese officials also are working to retain the country’s pool of unskilled and semiskilled workers. Factories have raised salaries and local governments in industrial centers such as Shenzhen in China’s south have steadily increased the minimum wage to help working families and to press companies to produce more expensive and valuable products. 76 As part of its job-creation push, China is looking for ways to lure Western-educated citizens back home to start companies. Across the country, officials are creating investment funds, providing cash subsidies and building business incubators. China’s Ministry of Science and Technology counts 115 university science parks and more than 1,600 technology business incubators in the country providing mentorship, legal advice and office space to aspiring entrepreneurs. 77 One incubator, Dream Town, offers subsidies to help startups pay for equipment and staff. 78 In recent years, Premier Li Keqiang has called for “mass entrepreneurship and innovation.” In March, at the National People’s Congress, China’s legislature, he bragged that 12,000 companies were started every day in China in 2015. 79 “The government’s job is not to hand out the ‘iron rice bowl’ or permanent jobs to the people, but to create enabling conditions for the people to use their own ingenuity and hard work to create or secure ‘gold rice bowls,’ so to speak,” Li said in March. “The employment rate in the past years has been fairly high because we have leveraged the enthusiasm for entrepreneurial and innovation activities.” 80

About the Author Yong Zhao: “The Chinese system is not a fair system.” Suzanne Sataline is an independent writer and researcher and a 2017 fellow at the Alicia Patterson Foundation, where she is researching a book about Hong Kong politics. She is a recent graduate of Columbia University’s Masters of Fine Arts program and previously a Nieman fellow at Harvard University. She is a regular contributer to Foreign Policy’s web site. Other work has been published by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Popular Science and National Geographic. She previously reported for SAGE Business Researcher on China’s economic slowdown. Chronology

1848–1949 Chinese immigrants trigger controversy in U.S.

1842–1848 Treaties that seal China’s defeat in the Opium Wars allow foreign countries freer trade and access there. This spurs a market in western countries for cheap Chinese labor. Thousands of Chinese men arrive in California in the coming decades to help build the transcontinental railroad. 1870–1882 Americans complain that the surge of Chinese workers has suppressed wages. The U.S. government acts to discourage Chinese from settling and imposes a virtual ban on Chinese women to prevent the birth of children. In 1882, President Chester A. Arthur signs the Chinese Exclusion Act, which bars Chinese laborers for 10 years; subsequent acts extend the ban. 1898 The Supreme Court rules in U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark that a child born in the United States to Chinese parents is a U.S. citizen, establishing the precedent of birthright citizenship. 1921 The Emergency Quota Act establishes a numerical limit on immigration and creates an annual “national origins” quota equal to 3 percent of the number of residents from a country living in the United States as of 1910. 1927–1950 Many Chinese emigrate because of food shortages and violence unleashed by political strife, including a long civil war interrupted by World War II. Many migrants move to Singapore and what later becomes Malaysia. 1943 The Magnuson Act repeals the U.S. Chinese Exclusion Act. It allows about 105 Chinese immigrants a year, and lets those in the United States become naturalized citizens. Congress passes the law after China allies with America against Japan during World War II. 1949–1978 Communist policies drastically cut migration. 1949 Mao Zedong’s Communists win the civil war against the Nationalists. An estimated 2 to 3 million people flee to Hong Kong and Taiwan. After 1950, when China closes its borders, most citizens are not allowed to leave until 1978. 1954 China’s foreign ministry invites overseas Chinese scientists and technicians to return and help rebuild their homeland. This prompts the U.S. State Department to grant citizenship to select resident Chinese refugees with useful skills. 1965 The U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act abolishes the national origins quota system, which critics had deemed discriminatory, and grants preferences to skilled workers and people with familial ties to U.S. citizens and legal residents. The law ends the preference for European immigrants and transforms the United States with new immigrants from Central America, Africa and Asia. With its numerical caps and new restrictions, the law also touches off waves of undocumented migration. 1966–1976 During the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long era of violent political upheaval, China bars most movement overseas. 1978–Present New Chinese policies spur new immigration. 1978 China’s Four Modernizations program opens the country to the outside world in a quest to improve the economy and modernize defense, industry, science and technology, all of which were impeded by Mao’s programs. The era heralds the start of mass emigration. 1989 A huge protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to end corruption and permit free speech and other civil liberties halts when government soldiers open fire, killing hundreds. Activists are smuggled into Hong Kong and overseas. In the years that follow, tens of thousands of Hong Kong residents leave, as fears spread that liberties will erode after 1997, when the People’s Republic of China assumes control of the longtime British colony. 1990 Congress creates the EB-5 Program to stimulate the U.S. economy through job creation and investment by foreign nationals. Tens of thousands of Chinese citizens apply. 1993 The Golden Venture cargo ship, carrying 286 undocumented immigrants from China, runs aground off New York City. Ten passengers die. The incident shines a light on the vast world of illegal migration. 2015 More than half a million Chinese students enroll overseas. Since China’s reforms began, 4 million Chinese students have studied abroad, with more than half returning home.

Resources for Further Study Bibliography

Books

Lee, Erika, “The Making of Asian America: A History,” Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2015. A historian of immigration traces how Asian nationals transformed the United States. Spence, Jonathan D., “The Search for Modern China (Third Edition),” W.W. Norton and Co., 2012. A Yale University history professor outlines China’s political, economic, social and cultural past.

Zhao, Yong, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon: Why China has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World,” Jossey-Bass, 2014. A leading education academic dissects China’s school system. Zolberg, Aristide R., “A Nation by Design: Immigration Policy in the Fashioning of America,” Russell Sage Foundation, 2006. A political science professor describes America’s complex political and social relationship with new arrivals.

Articles

“The New Class War: Special Report, Chinese Society,” The Economist, July 9, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/gppn5mv. A journalist outlines how the rise of China’s first large middle class creates opportunities and challenges for the Chinese government. Barton, Dominic, Yougang Chen and Amy Jin, “Mapping China’s Middle Class,” McKinsey Quarterly, June 2013, http://tinyurl.com/zdlet22. A business consultancy says that rising prosperity in China’s inland cities will fuel consumption. Larmer, Brook, “The Parachute Generation,” The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 2, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/zat3uch. A magazine article explains why parents of even younger Chinese students are enrolling their offspring in U.S. schools.

Reports and Studies

Farrugia, Christine, and Rajika Bhandari, “Open Doors: Report on International Educational Exchange,” Institute of International Education, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/n2ewxf9. An annual statistical report traces international students in the United States and U.S. students abroad. Rosen, Daniel H., and Thilo Hanemann, “New Neighbors 2017 Update: Chinese FDI in the United States by Congressional District,” Rhodium Group, April 24, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lgnmops. An annual report by a research firm tracks overseas investing The Next Step

China and the Global Economy

Macfarlane, Alec, “China has a grand plan to dominate world trade,” CNN Money, May 12, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/n73kprm. As President Trump resists globalism, China looks to increase its international influence with its One Belt, One Road initiative, which would pump billions of dollars into railways, roads and other projects across Africa, Asia and Europe. Magnier, Mark, “China’s economy slows in April in ‘turning point,’” Market Watch, May 15, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/l66wlct. Chinese industrial production, retail sales and fixed-asset investment slowed in April, missing estimates, but most economists believe the country can meet this year’s growth target. Sang-Hun, Choe, “Moon Jae-in of South Korea and China Move to Soothe Tensions,” The New York Times, May 11, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lhxffde. Chinese and South Korean leaders looked to mend ties after South Korea allowed the United States to build on its territory a missile defense system, which China views as a threat to its security.

U.S. Immigration Policy

Barros, Aline, “H1B Visa Applications Down Amid Reform Effort,” Voice of America, April 19, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/kyybgr3. Applications for H1B visas – which allow U.S. companies, typically tech firms, to temporarily hire skilled foreign workers – decreased this year amid criticism that the program takes jobs and earning power away from American workers. Geewax, Marilyn, and Jackie Northam, “Kushner Family Business Pitch In China Prompts Questions About Investor Visas,” NPR, May 8, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lcjx263. Ethicists objected after Nicole Meyer, the sister of President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, told Chinese investors they could qualify for EB-5 visas by investing at least $500,000 in a New Jersey real estate project backed by her family. Critics say the visas – which offer a route to permanent U.S. residence with an investment that creates at least 10 full-time jobs for U.S. workers – are magnets for fraud and abuse. Merchant, Nomaan, “AP Exclusive: Chinese Spent $24b On US, Other ‘Golden Visas,’” Associated Press, May 16, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/m56xnof. The United States has issued more than 40,000 “golden visas,” part of the EB-5 visa program, to Chinese migrants and investors, who have paid at least $7.7 billion to the United States and about $24 billion for these types of visas across the world, according to an Associated Press analysis. Organizations

Asia Society 725 Park Ave., New York, NY 10021 1-212-288-6400 http://asiasociety.org [email protected] Cultural and educational organization offering lectures and classes on Asian arts, business, culture and policies. Also operates in Shanghai and Hong Kong. The Brookings Institution 1775 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20036

1-202-797-6000 https://www.brookings.edu A nonprofit public policy research organization with a sister center in Beijing. Council on Foreign Relations The Harold Pratt House, 58 East 68th St., New York, NY 10065 1-212-434-9400 http://www.cfr.org A nonpartisan membership organization that conducts research, sponsors discussions and publishes the journal Foreign Affairs. Institute of International Education 809 United Nations Plaza, New York, NY 10017 1-212-883-8200 https://www.iie.org A nonprofit that provides scholarships and research on student enrollment worldwide, including in its annual Open Doors report. Migration Policy Institute 1400 16th St., N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036 1-202-266-1940 http://www.migrationpolicy.org/ A nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank that analyzes the movement of people worldwide. RAND Corporation 1776 Main St., Santa Monica, CA 90401 1-310-393-0411 http://www.rand.org A nonprofit think tank that conducts research and analysis. Notes

[1] Miriam Jordan, “More Chinese Are Sending Younger Children to Schools in U.S.,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 3, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/n7rouoo. [2] Ibid. [3] “The Long March Abroad,” The Economist, July 7, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/jcpv3z7. [4] Ibid. [5] Erika Lee, “Chinese immigrants now largest group of new arrivals to the U.S: Column,” USA Today, July 7, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/k2fo9ur. [6] “Selected Population Profile in the United States,” U.S. Census Bureau, accessed on May 10, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/ljmug7c. [7] Andrew Browne, “The Great Chinese Exodus,” The Wall Street Journal, Aug. 15, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/morpu6p. [8] Sue-Lin Wong and Kevin Yao, “China April manufacturing growth slows faster than expected,” Reuters, April 29, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/k6xx7ka. [9] Keith Bradsher, “Debt Crisis Shakes Chinese Town, Pointing to Wider Problems,” The New York Times, April 25, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lmlqzf4. [10] “China Gets Strict on Forex Transactions to Stop Money Exiting Abroad,” Bloomberg News, Jan. 2, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/z85vqmp. [11] “Recruitment Program for Innovative Talents (Long Term),” The Thousand Talents Plan, http://tinyurl.com/k7hdcpy. [12] Mara Hvistendahl, “China’s programme for recruiting foreign scientists comes under scrutiny,” The South China Morning Post, Nov. 3, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/l8gza7f. [13] Michael Schuman, “Venture Communism: How China Is Building a Start-Up Boom,” The New York Times, Sept. 3, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/lbnlmq3. [14] Li Yuan, “China is Losing to the U.S. in High-Stakes Battle for Artificial Intelligence Talent,” The Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/ky8gmtv. [15] Te-Ping Chen, “China Economy Draws More Students Back From Abroad,” The New York Times, March 1, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/mwjhn59. [16] Dudley L. Poston Jr. and Juyin Helen Wong, “The Chinese Diaspora: The current distribution of the overseas Chinese population,” Chinese Journal of Sociology, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/mmwwu7e. [17] “China,” World Statistic Pocketbook, United Nations Statistics Division, accessed May 15, 2017, http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx? crname=China. [18] “International migrant stock 2015,” United Nations Population Division, accessed May 10, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/h4eleja; “Trends in International Migrant Stock: The 2015 Revision,” United Nations Population Division, December 2015, http://tinyurl.com/n29rnxb.

[19] “Remittance Flows Worldwide in 2015,” Pew Research Center, Aug. 31, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/hyrrrw4. [20] Ibid. [21] Antonio Graceffo, “Economic Impact of Trump Immigration Policies on Chinese,” Foreign Policy Journal, March 3, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/n3v753n. [22] Ronald Skeldon, “Migration From China,” Journal of International Affairs, Winter 1996, http://tinyurl.com/mmesp6a. [23] “China’s middle class: 225m reasons for China’s leaders to worry,” The Economist, July 9, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/ze5r577. [24] “The new class war,” The Economist, July 9, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/gppn5mv. [25] Feng Wang, Baochang Gu and Yong Cai, “The end of China’s one-child policy,” Brookings Institution, March 30, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/mx586rr. [26] Dominic Barton, Yougang Chen and Amy Jin, “Mapping China’s middle class,” McKinsey & Co., June 2013, http://tinyurl.com/zdlet22. [27] Browne, op. cit.; David Pierson, “Here’s why Chinese money is pouring into Temecula’s wine region,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/l2vpddm. [28] Browne, ibid. [29] Michael Shuman, “Is China Stealing Jobs? It May Be Losing Them, Instead,” The New York Times, July 23, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/ld2z5gk. [30] “All Places of Origin,” Institute of International Education, accessed May 10, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/n3zdoug. [31] “Fields of Study by Place of Origin,” Institute of International Education, accessed May 10, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/m5h3wwg. [32] Jordan, op. cit. [33] Brook Larmer, “The Parachute Generation,” The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 2, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/zat3uch. [34] “The Long March Abroad,” op. cit. [35] Yong Zhao, “The Dawn of a New Era: China’s College Entrance Exam Transformation,” ZhaoLearning.com, May 9, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/jwtxsc7. [36] Te-Ping Chen and Miriam Jordan, “Why So Many Chinese Students Come to the U.S.,” The Wall Street Journal, May 1, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/k84aj3v. [37] “The Long March Abroad,” op. cit. [38] Ibid. [39] Te-Ping Chen, “China Economy Draws More Students Back from Abroad,” The Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/mwjhn59. [40] Eleanor Albert and Beina Xu, “China’s Environmental Crisis,” Council on Foreign Relations, Jan. 18, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/6496rvc. [41] Ibid. [42] Hepeng Jia and Ling Wang, “Peering into China’s thick haze of air pollution,” American Chemical Society, Jan. 23, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/z6a8y57. [43] Zhu Liu, “China’s Carbon Emissions Report 2015,” Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, May 2015, http://tinyurl.com/ms2yptk. [44] Yuyu Chen et al., “Evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China’s Huai River policy,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Aug. 6, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/kckdufh. [45] Edward Wong, “Air Pollution Linked to 1.2 Million Premature Deaths in China,” The New York Times, April 1, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/c5l3soq; Zhu Chen et al., “China tackles the health effects of air pollution,” The Lancet, Dec. 14, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/k4cdwjr; Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “China Has Made Strides in Addressing Air Pollution, Environmentalist Says,” The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/kb9hvzl. [46] Tatlow, ibid. [47] Jia and Wang, op. cit. [48] Albert and Xu, op. cit. [49] Ibid. [50] Edward Wong, “In China, Breathing Becomes a Childhood Risk,” The New York Times, April 22, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/kts9e6l. [51] Jiayang Fan, “The Golden Generation,” The New Yorker, Feb. 22, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/jenfwwe. [52] Ibid.

[53] Ian Johnson, “Q and A: John Osburg on the Angst Found Among China’s Newly Rich,” Sinosphere, The New York Times, Dec. 16, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/mcmnlfc. [54] Ibid. [55] Larmer, op. cit. [56] Miriam Jordan, “Demand for H1-B Skilled-Worker Visas Forces Agency Into Lottery,” The Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/kyrddyk. [57] “FY 2016 Nonimmigrant Visas Issued,” U.S. State Department, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/mg5lqra. [58] “H-1B visas do mainly go to Indian outsourcing firms,” The Economist, Feb. 9, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/hxef3u8. [59] Thilo Hanemann and Cassie Gao, “Record Deal Making in 2016 Pushes Cumulative Chinese FDI in the US above $100 billion,” Rhodium Group, Dec. 30, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/kwb2dzv. [60] Daniel H. Rosen and Thilo Hanemann, “New Neighbors 2017 Update: Chinese FDI in the United States by Congressional District,” Rhodium Group, April 24, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lgnmops. [61] Ibid. [62] Tara Lachapelle and Rani Molla, “China’s Voracious Appetite,” Bloomberg, March 21, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/lp8k92a. [63] Kelly Crow, “China’s Taikang Life Insurance Takes 13.5% Stake in Sotheby’s,” The Wall Street Journal, July 28, 2016, https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-taikang-life-insurance-takes-13-5-stake-in-sothebys-1469656466. [64] “Rhodium New Neighbors 2017: 2017 Update. Chinese Investment in the United States by Congressional District, Executive Summary,” Rhodium Group, April 2017, http://tinyurl.com/m3n9myf. [65] Carla N. Argueta and Alison Siskin, “EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa,” Congressional Research Service, April 22, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/lydrxfz. [67] “Feinstein, Grassley Introduce Legislation to Eliminate Troubled EB-5 Investor Visa Program,” press release, Sen. Chuck Grassley, Feb. 3, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lppwzzk. [68] “Immigrant Investor Program: Progress Made to Detect and Prevent Fraud, but Additional Actions Could Further Agency Efforts,” Government Accountability Office, September 2016, http://tinyurl.com/mft54so. [69] Feinstein, Grassley, op. cit. [70] Eric Lipton and Jesse Drucker, “Kushner Family Stands to Gain From Visa Rules in Trump’s First Major Law,” The New York Times, May 8, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/lsfuc6f. [71] Ibid. [72] Dionne Searcey and Keith Bradsher, “Chinese Cash Floods U.S. Real Estate Market,” The New York Times, Nov. 28, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/n8haloo. [73] Ibid. [74] Chen and Jordan, Chinese Students, op. cit. [75] Ibid. [76] Schuman, “Is China Stealing Jobs?” op. cit. [77] Edward Tse, “The Rise of Entrepreneurship in China,” Forbes.com, April 5, 2016, http://tinyurl.com/jbp3cu7. [78] Schuman, “Venture Communism,” op. cit. [79] Ibid. [80] “Transcript of Premier Li Keqiang’s Meeting with the Press at the Fifth Session of the 12th National People’s Congress,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, March 16, 2017, http://tinyurl.com/mz3hut8.

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