China faces nationalist backlash as it turns to migration for growth

When Beijing unveiled plans to let young foreign scientists and budding tech talent move to China without a guaranteed job, the authorities must have thought they were on to a winner.

The so-called “K Visa” would attract skilled workers to boost growth and further China’s ambitions to become the world’s technological powerhouse.

It would present the country as dynamic and open to the world. And most notably, it would show up Donald Trump, who’d just introduced a $100,000 (£74,000) annual fee for applicants of a similar H-1B visa in the US.

But ordinary Chinese households saw something quite different.

With China experiencing double-digit youth unemployment and churning out record numbers of college graduates, many ordinary citizens fear that foreigners could take scarce jobs.

What’s more, they dread a destabilising influx of immigrants.

In an unusually outspoken display of dissent, hordes of Chinese citizens have posted on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, accusing Beijing of “turning its back on its own people”.

“A lot of college students in China are unemployed,” one Weibo user said. “Don’t you know what the employment environment in China is like?”

Potentially overlooked Chinese jobseekers bristled at the implicit idea that foreigners were better qualified for these jobs than locals were.

“Honestly, few of us science majors think it’s necessary to import talent,” said a disgruntled user. “I fought my way through countless battles, but I passed my exams. I have real skills, and I’m the best.”

And many fretted that China would be overrun with foreigners – particularly Indians, who might now choose Shenzhen over Silicon Valley after Trump put a $100,000 price tag on H-1B visas.

Many believe this could usher in the kind of dysfunction and discord that they perceive to exist in the West.

“Don’t be a sinner of history: don’t introduce foreign immigrants, and don’t repeat the mistakes of Europe and the United States!” said one user.

“Why do people panic when they see Indians? Because Australia and Canada have already fallen,” said another. “Chinese people don’t want to see their big cities become smoky and chaotic. Who is the person pushing this project?”

Angry doom-scrollers swapped stories.

One told of a Pakistani who became an urban rail engineer in Hunan Province, but whose Chinese-language skills “need to be improved”.

“There are also black international students working in the Meteorological Bureau,” he said. “That really makes Chinese people envious.”

In a country with as few migrants as China, this may seem an extreme reaction.

The 2020 census counted just 845,697 foreigners living in mainland China. It was a 40pc increase from a decade earlier, but still a minuscule 0.06pc of China’s 1.4bn population.

This is nothing like the rate in the West, and just the tiniest fraction of that in other low-migrant Asian countries like Japan (2pc), South Korea (2.3pc), and even India (0.4pc).

“China is not a traditional immigrant nation,” Hu Xijin, a leading Chinese journalist, said in a Weibo post.

“With the rise of the internet in recent years, a small number of foreigners have been exposed for crimes committed in China. Each incident has caused a sensation, fuelling strong public backlash against the entry of some low-quality foreigners into China.”

But here is a deeper, structural explanation for the simmering resentment: China’s troubled labour market.

China’s urban youth unemployment rate was almost 19pc in August. It rose as high as 21pc in mid-2023, after which China’s statistics bureau decided to count it in a different way.

That lopped more than six points off the rate. But it has risen again and “is very likely under-reported”, according to Leah Fahy, a Capital Economics analyst.

Job creation has been hit by automation in factories, a slowdown in the services sector, and shrinking profit margins in fiercely competitive industries.

The government has also cracked down on employers and employees avoiding their social security contributions, making hiring more expensive. This would “be weighing most on youth employment, particularly of new graduates”, Fahy says.

Meanwhile, the number of graduates entering the job market keeps rising. There were almost 11 million college graduates last year, an increase of more than 50pc in the past decade.

Everyone has anecdotes of graduates working as cleaners or delivery drivers. Some young people are even paying to sit in fake “pretend to work” offices just to feel like they’re employed.

Xi Jinping, the Chinese president, signalled concern at where this trend might lead last year, telling a Politburo meeting that job creation was the key to preventing social unrest.

However, it isn’t the first time Beijing has tried to nudge open the door to foreigners.

In 2020, a proposal to ease the requirements for permanent residency provoked a similar backlash, and ultimately a government retreat.

The authorities have left themselves some wiggle room this time around.

The specific eligibility rules have not yet been finalised. And even those who get the K Visa will also still have to apply for a work permit and a residency permit.

Beijing has sought to defend the scheme, citing estimates that China’s manufacturing sector faces a talent shortfall of almost 30 million workers by 2035.

State media outlets have described the K Visa as a demonstration of China’s openness and confidence. Beijing has also recently eased visa rules for tourists and visiting scholars.

The People’s Daily, the Communist Party mouthpiece, declared that while the K Visa would bring scientists and software developers to China, it did not amount to immigration.

But as one Weibo user suggested, it might be hard to persuade sceptical Chinese households of this.

“Some people see the K Visa and they imagine a massive influx of Indians and Africans into China, and then they imagine China becoming like the UK, the US, and some European countries, overwhelmed and disrupted by immigrants,” he wrote.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]