Visa processing in Shanghai, China
China has restrictive laws affecting migrants and immigrants that are administered and enforced by multiple bureaucracies. The CCP’s focus 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 (household registration – 戶籍) while immigration to China is controlled under the Exit and Entry Administration Law.
DOMESTIC MIGRATION MANAGEMENT AND CONTROL
The Hukou system was established in 1958 by the communists 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 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” (liudong renkou – 流動人口) totaling 286 million people in 2020 as “recorded by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, accounting for 20% of the country’s total population.” The floating population is monitored through annual China Migrants Dynamic Surveys (CMDS) that are administered by the National Health Commission, which collects data on Chinese who do not have a local hukou (i.e., are floaters) for the purposes of adjusting CCP policies and public services reapportionment.
The movements of the floating population are controlled by local governments who 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 migrant 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 (社会信用体系) and includes over 600 million surveillance cameras backed by Skynet (天网) and Sharp Eyes (雪亮工程) (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 金盾工程), and “grassroots monitoring” (employing 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).
These ubiquitous capabilities also provide the basis for close monitoring of all foreigners/immigrants in accordance with Chinese immigration law.
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 Eleventh National People’s Congress and went into effect on 1 July 2013. Not coincidentally, this law was one of the first laws implemented by Xi Jinping upon his confirmation as Chinese president by the 12th National People’s Congress in March 2013 in 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 gray 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 (MPS) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Article 3 is used by the Ministry of State Security (in conjunction with the aforementioned domestic mass surveillance system) for the purposes of intelligence collection and counterespionage. Bureaucratic conflicts thus are a feature not a bug of the system.
The MSS focus is on foreigners suspected of espionage, subversion, political activism, holding illegal gatherings, and any activities considered harmful to state interests (i.e., 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.
With all the comprehensive surveillance and monitoring coupled with the arbitrary interpretation and enforcement of the immigration law, it is no wonder that the bulk of immigrants to China in recent years have been reintegrated overseas Chinese, especially from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Who except for foreigners on temporary work visas supporting their company operations in China or those on student visas, cultural exchanges, and tourist visas would care to risk travel to China?
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
Xi Jinping’s long-stated policy of “opening China to the world” apparently has not been applied by the CCP bureaucracies to foreign immigration. As of 2023, according to the South China Morning Post, there were a paltry 12,000 foreigners who held permanent residency in China and another 711,000 with temporary residency visas (nominally for work or school), as reported by the National Immigration Administration (NIA).
In comparison with the US, Newsweek reported the following: “There were 12.8 million lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, living in the U.S. as of January 1, 2024, according to estimates by the Office of Homeland Security Statistics.” Furthermore, according to the Migration Policy Institute, the US State Dept also issued 1.3 million employment-based temporary visas and 10.4 million student visas in 2023 alone.
It appears that immigration with Chinese characteristics is more about Orwellian surveillance and monitoring of EVERYONE in China to help ensure continuity and security of the communist regime and minimize interactions between Chinese citizens and foreigners except for those that directly benefit the state than it is about achieving Xi’s vision of global cooperation and a shared future for humanity and other oft-repeated blarney.
The end.
This article originally appeared in Stu Cvrk’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission
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