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a CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE publication
April 1994
Unclassified
Editors Note:
A number of factors combine in any assessment of potential Chinese immigration to North America: current economic and social conditions in China; the recent massive internal migration from the rural to the coastal regions; uncertain political succession; and post-1997 Hong Kong are among those discussed below. In particular, the author examines illegal immigration by sea as an indication of the growing desperation of thousands of Chinese.
The author, Mr. Paul George, is an independent analyst in Ottawa specializing in Asia.
Disclaimer: Publication of an article in the COMMENTARY series does not imply CSIS authentication of the information nor CSIS endorsement of the author's views.
On 6 June 1993, a rusty old freighter, the Golden Venture, beached on a sandbar in sight of New York City. The ship was carrying close to 300 would-be immigrants from the People's Republic of China, eight of whom died in a desperate bid to make it to shore through the surf. A few weeks later, in international waters off the northern Pacific coast of Mexico, the US Coast Guard intercepted three more vessels carrying more than 650 Chinese migrants towards America. These two events, and reports that several other ships were en route to the United States or were being prepared for a similar voyage, immediately focused attention on the scale of illegal Chinese immigration by boat to North America. In fact, although incidents of ship-borne illegal immigration are on the rise, this method of entry is only the most public manifestation of a tide of illegal Chinese immigration to North America that has grown in recent years.
There is no reliable figure for the number of Chinese who manage to enter the United States illegally by every means each year. Some estimates range up to 100,000, although this is almost certainly inflated. Nevertheless, the numbers of Chinese formally seeking asylum in the United States through the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) are impressive. As of 1 June 1993, Chinese asylum applicants (6143) were surpassed only by Guatemalans (21157), Salvadorans (7579), and Haitians (6228). Executive Office of Immigration Review statistics "indicate that more Chinese (1794) requested asylum during exclusion proceedings than any other nationality in f/y 1992". INS officials at New York's Kennedy Airport also report that Chinese led all others in asylum claims (1080) during the first six months of f/y 1993 (CRS Report for Congress, 93-727 EPW, 11 August 1993).
By far the greatest number of illegal Chinese immigrants arrive by air, carrying false documents. They often come directly from Asian cities such as Bangkok, but increasingly are arriving by land or air from South American way-stations in Bolivia, Belize and Panama. Arrivals by boat directly from China are a relatively new phenomenon, and the US Coast Guard has intercepted about 3,000 boat people since September 1991. Based on reports from American immigration officials of a dramatic increase in Chinese nationals detected trying to enter the United States by land in the San Diego area, some boat people appear to be using Mexico as a landing point. It is clear that the numbers willing to risk this kind of illegal entry are substantial and growing. As an indicator, the total of immigrants per boat has also steadily increased, with passengers being counted in the hundreds today compared with tens just a short time ago.
Many groups are involved in large-scale people smuggling to North America. For example, Pakistani and Indian operations are well documented, as are the more common Latin American activities. However, illegal Chinese immigration appears to be showing the greatest growth. More-over, all the boat-people incidents detected so far have shown clear connections to Chinese criminal gangs. This fact, and the torrent of operations recently uncovered, have led the American government to adopt new restrictive measures against illegal Chinese immigrants. In the past, any Chinese national intercepted at point of entry was virtually assured the right of permanent residence by claiming that he or she was escaping from political persecution. Usually, such individuals were admitted to await an immigration hearing at a later date. Now, given the likelihood of criminal involvement, and the connected assumption that the migrants are primarily motivated by economic, not political reasons, a much tougher régime examines the merits of each Chinese immigrant's case before asylum is granted.
Whereas word will undoubtedly get back to China that illegal immigration to the United States is much tougher than it used to be, the Administration's aggressive new policy is unlikely to stem the flow. The long-term costs to the individuals, and the hardship of the journey they are prepared to undertake to reach the United States, demonstrates they are extraordinarily highly motivated to make the attempt. Each would-be immigrant is reported to pay up to $30,000 to Chinese criminal gangs for passage to America. Typically, a down-payment is made in China with the balance being paid off over many years of virtual slave labour in the garment and restaurant industries in New York. Retribution for failing to make repayment is believed to be harsh. For the individual, the voyage usually involves many months crammed into the hold of an unseaworthy vessel with inadequate toilet and bathing facilities. Paid enforcers maintain brutal control over the passengers and distribute the food, which consists mainly of rice.
The Clinton Administration is clearly intent on arresting ship-borne illegal entry by intercepting undocumented Chinese before they reach the USA, and by making it much more difficult for them to claim asylum if they do manage to land. The Chinese who arrived on the Golden Venture, for example, were immediately placed in detention far from the opportunities and temptations of New York. Their immigration applications are being pro-cessed from prison. The Chinese intercepted at sea off Mexico never even made it ashore in the United States. Washington persuaded the Mexican authorities to decide the fate of these individuals away from the gaze of the American media and American refugee support groups. All but two of them were repatriated to China at American expense.
Clearly, for the Chinese boat people, the inhumane conditions they have to endure in the hope of becoming established in the United States are offset by the conviction that their suffering will ultimately be worthwhile. By implication, economic, social and political conditions in China must be very bad if so many are seeking to leave the country under such desperate circumstances.
Although this hypothesis is seemingly contradicted by the astounding level of economic growth in China in recent years, the desire to migrate between countries, or within a country, is usually a reflection of a wide range of factors that lead individuals to perceive economic, social or political advantages accruing to them in starting afresh elsewhere. Clearly a number of elements—economic, geographical, historical, social and political—have influenced the kind of population movement represented by the Chinese boat people.
To understand the boat-people phenomenon requires an appreciation of traditional Chinese migration patterns as well as analysis of the rapidly changing socio-economic and political structure in China. First, it is important to note that there is a long history of legal and illegal Chinese emigration to the United States. Chinese criminal networks, known as Triads, have engaged in smuggling people to America since at least the California gold rush in the 19th century.
Second, there has been a tradition, based on the presence of extended families in California and elsewhere, of Chinese from Fijian province—the southern coastal province opposite Taiwan—moving to the United States. The major smuggling gangs are based in Fijian, and reports indicate that up to 90% of Chinese boat people originate there and in Guangdong province immediately to the south. Whereas traditional emigration patterns explain some of the illegal activity detected recently, the sheer numbers of people involved in cases like that of the Golden Venture are atypical. New factors are driving up the numbers of people wishing to emigrate from China.
Paradoxically, a large part of the boat-people problem has its origins in the economic boom that China has experienced in recent years. The growth in the economy has been uneven, with the rural areas falling behind the urban centres and coastal regions. At the same time, millions of farm labourers have been forced off the land by the construction of rural industries and real estate projects. Some four million farmers a year are expected to lose their land to the expansion of a rural industrial sector that cannot possibly employ them. In addition, 10 million new workers come of age every year. By extrapolation, it is estimated that China will have some 200 million surplus workers by the end of the century. As a result, a massive internal migration is underway in China. This so-called "human avalanche" is already moving to the major coastal cities in search of work. However, the coastal municipalities cannot absorb the huge influx of peasants. Guangzhou, for example, reportedly has as many as four million illegal residents, and all of the coastal cities are ringed by growing shantytowns. As a result of the desperate socio-economic conditions, emigration appears to be an even more attractive option than usual, both for the locals and the newcomers from the interior.
The current labour crisis in China is the direct result of the government's policy of boosting the industrial capacity of the southern coastal areas to the detriment of the interior. Reports of peasant uprisings in several parts of rural China in recent months demonstrate a growing opposition to the uneven economic conditions in the country. To make matters worse, many local governments have imposed arbitrary levies on the already impoverished peasants to pay for new investments. At the same time, state procurement prices for grain have not kept pace with inflation. The government has also been paying the peasants for their produce in IOUs since 1991, and it has often been impossible for the farmers to collect their money. The net effect is that peasant incomes have declined steadily in recent years, compounding the growing discrepancy between rural and urban earnings. Farmers make an average of $173 (US) a year, whereas urban dwellers earn about $370. The increased mobility of the peasants has simply fuelled rural resentment at the better living standards of the urban dwellers. A significant outcome of the situation has been the migration of vast numbers of destitute rural people to the more prosperous coastal areas.
In booming money culture, the peasants can no longer be kept on the farm by patriotic slogans and appeals to the state ideology. However, the peasants are caught in a poverty trap. Their incomes in the rural areas are in relative decline, yet the opportunities for finding rewarding work in the overcrowded coastal areas are also slim. Emigration is thus increasingly seen as a last chance to break the poverty cycle, and emigration "services" have expanded to meet demand. Smuggling people for profit has become one more facet of the emerging market economy in China. The number of smuggling syndicates has increased and, because the pay-offs are enormous, the operations have become very sophisticated and multinational in scope.
When the Communist Party came to power in 1949, it established mechanisms to ensure its complete control over Chinese society. A key component of this was the residence permit, which restricted internal population movements and suppressed individuality and dissent. Deng Xiaoping's introduction of market reforms and the opening up of China to foreign investment have led to the loss of state control over individuals who now move within the country with impunity. In effect, the economic crisis in the countryside, the explosive growth of the coastal areas in the south and the internal movement of vast numbers of people within China are reflections of the erosion of central authority. The collapse of central control, above all else, has encouraged the kind of illegal activity represented by the growth of immigration by sea to North America.
The emigration problem has been compounded by the breakdown in law and order that has accompanied the rapid economic growth and social change in China. Violent and non-violent crime have risen dramatically throughout the country. The inability of the police to counter the wave of lawlessness has encouraged the growth of organized crime, particularly the Triads with their traditional interests in the drug trade, prostitution, extortion and smuggling. In Guangdong and Fijian provinces, police and border security forces are known to collaborate with the Triads and local smugglers in bringing contraband into China. It is equally clear that many officials are paid to look the other way, or actually to participate, in the smuggling out of people.
Large numbers of Chinese emigrants go to Taiwan, which is only a matter of a few hours by boat from Fijian. The Taiwanese authorities estimate that some 50,000 illegal immigrants have landed in the last five years, with about half being repatriated; about 500 illegal immigrants already working in Taiwan are caught each month. Despite the proximity of Taiwan and the obvious cultural and family ties to mainland China, the United States is still a preferred destination for the majority of migrants. In fact, illegal immigration from China has thus far been a negligible problem for other major immigrant-receiving countries in the West such as Australia and Canada. In part this reflects well-entrenched views of the "good life" that can be found in the U.S., the so-called "beautiful country" in Chinese folklore. Of more significance, it is well known that the United States will give asylum to Chinese fleeing communist repression and that repatriation is not a likely outcome.
To receive asylum in the United States, aliens must show a well-founded fear that they face persecution in one of five categories: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. In addition, it is generally held that an executive order signed by President Bush four years ago, ordering that asylum be given to all people fleeing China to escape the government's strict family planning policies, has had a major impact on the level of illegal migration. According to a recent report, virtually all Chinese claiming asylum do so under the terms of Bush's executive order, and four out of five of these claims are approved (U.S. News and World Report, 21 June 1993). Critics of the policy maintain that it acts as a magnet to Chinese migrants who would not otherwise try to reach the United States.
The enormous potential for legal or illegal emigration from China has always been a concern to countries in the immediate region. Certainly, Beijing would be capable of flooding the world with immigrants if it chose to do so. Observers of the situation are reminded of Deng Xiaoping's tongue-in-cheek response to President Carter's request that he be flexible on emigration during the Chinese leader's visit to Washington in January 1979: "Fine. We'll let them go. Are you prepared to accept ten million?" (Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power and Principle). Now, with large numbers of Chinese illegal immigrants prepared to take desperate measures to reach North America, there is heightened concern about the global implications of Chinese government involvement in the process.
Notwithstanding the potential for the boat people to be used for political or economic leverage over the United States, there is no apparent overt Chinese government support for people smuggling. In fact, Beijing has acted quite quickly to check the problem, albeit at the same time publicly blaming American asylum policy for encouraging illegal immigration. There have been several recent reports of government crackdowns on immigrant trafficking in Fujian province, and about 100 people have been jailed or sent to labour camps for their smuggling activities.
However, it is obvious that the assembly of so many migrants, and the preparations required to send them by ship to America, are not easily hidden. Common sense suggests there must be some official complicity in arranging the traffic. It seems from the evidence, however, that any bureaucratic support for people smuggling is most probably to be found in the lower levels of the state security apparatus where corruption abounds; i.e., any official collusion is more likely to take the form of the acceptance of bribes by border police and security forces, rather than being driven by a policy directive from Beijing.
Large population flows, regardless of whether they are legal or illegal, are potential destabilizing for the recipient countries. In a Canadian context, certain national security concerns arising out of the Chinese boat-people experience must be considered. Obviously, this would particularly be the case in the event that clear Chinese government involvement is identified. Such concerns would include the political impact of the influx of massive numbers of people, especially in volumes that would swamp the capacity of the country's immigrant processing facilities, challenge Canada's asylum policy, and cause domestic political problems. In a sense, these kinds of issues have already been raised in the United States by the incidents of the Chinese boat people. The arrival of so many illegal immigrants in the Golden Venture incident, under the gaze of the American and international media, forced the government to reappraise its refugee policy. As a result, America has become much more wary of providing blanket refuge to the "huddled masses", even if they are fleeing communist repression.
The second major area of concern is based more on traditional security considerations: the prospect of Chinese intelligence agents being infiltrated under the cover of innocuous "boat people". For the moment, the United States and Canada do not appear to be threatened by the infiltration of large numbers of Chinese government agents from among the boat people. Taiwan clearly has much more to worry about in this regard, and PRC agents are known to be inserted into Taiwan in this manner. However, there are far more effective ways for intelligence agents to penetrate North American security through academic and industrial exchanges and regular immigration channels. The sheer number of potential boat people does, however, raise serious concerns about our immigration and refugee processing systems being swamped. In addition, public indignation over perceived "queue jumping" by economic migrants claiming refugee status is already a matter of record in Canada. It can be anticipated that the arrival of large numbers of Chinese migrants by boat would reinforce anti-economic immigrant sentiment in Canada and create significant political problems for the government.
A number of factors indicate that people-smuggling from China will become an increasingly serious problem in the future. Despite the publicity surrounding the Golden Venture and the failure of the migrants intercepted off the coast of Mexico to land in the United States, the tide of illegal immigrants is expected to grow. There are several reasons for this. Economic forces will remain the most powerful factor driving both internal and external Chinese migration. The increasing pressure of large-scale migration from the rural areas to the coastal regions will continue to encourage many to seek better opportunities in the United States. Furthermore, the breakdown of law and order will increase the opportunities for the Triads and other gangs to increase their activities in people smuggling.
Whether the Chinese government becomes actively involved in promoting the exodus by boat of large numbers of its people remains to be seen. However, it must be recognized that Beijing has that option and that Chinese boat people could conceivably be used to exert political or economic leverage on the international community. This is perhaps less likely now, however, given the recent American decision to extend China's Most Favoured Nation (MFN) trading status, and to "de-link" this issue from that of human rights in China—specifically, that China grant its people freedom of emigration.
Nonetheless, it is worth noting the parallels between the potential for Beijing to manipulate international opinion through the development of the boat-people option and the example of the Vietnamese government's use of boat people in the late 1970s. In the case of Vietnam, the majority of the boat people were ethnic Chinese driven out by the communist government following hostilities with China in 1978. Similar "fifth-column" concerns might encourage Beijing to pressure large numbers of Chinese opposed to the communist take-over to leave Hong Kong and Macau after the withdrawal of the British and Portuguese administrations in 1997 and 1999 respectively. These potential migrants would be in addition to the large outflow of people expected as 1997 approaches in Hong Kong.
Because many Hong Kong Chinese hold Canadian citizenship or landed immigrant status, it can be anticipated that Canada will be a prime destination for those Chinese fleeing communist rule who have nowhere else to go. In any event, both colonial transfers will accelerate the illegal out- migration of Chinese. Large-scale movements of people could begin at any time, but, depending on the nature of the transition, potentially very large numbers of Chinese will try to leave Hong Kong and Macau in the take-over period. Many of these, particularly if the régime change becomes chaotic or violent, will leave by boat for North America.
Whereas it can be anticipated that the transition to Chinese rule will probably lead to large outflows of people from Hong Kong and Macau, a potentially greater concern lies in the outcome of the post-Deng Xiaoping transition within China. The current level of internal unrest suggests that a pattern familiar in Chinese history is evolving: rural unrest provokes upheaval and leads to central government collapse. Although differing analyses exist as to the question of succession, if, as some analysts predict as a worst case scenario, China begins to break apart after Deng dies, the upheavals that follow will lead to massive population movements inside China and huge increases in the numbers of Chinese seeking to emigrate to escape the chaos. In some ways, this prospect has a precursor in the already large flows of people from the rural areas to the coastal regions. This is a direct result of the decline of Beijing's power over the provinces and over individual Chinese. Any increase in such movements, as could be expected with a general break-down in internal security, would dramatically swell the numbers of people prepared to chance everything on a sea voyage to North America.
Clearly, the potential links between internal political conditions in China and international immigration from China must be recognized in any analysis of illegal immigration to North America. China is undoubtedly becoming an increasingly anarchic society, with rising social tensions and urban/rural conflict leading to virtually uncontrollable internal migration. These conditions will continue to drive ordinary Chinese people to seek better opportunities through illegal emigration to the West. An examination of the factors generating large-scale internal migration in China reveals that there is likely to be a steady increase in the number of people willing to risk all in the quest for greater opportunities abroad.
Therefore, although the American government has chosen to take a stand against the surge of illegal immigration represented by the boat people, it is doubtful that Washington will be successful in limiting the numbers of Chinese seeking to enter the country illegally. It is highly probable that the intensified efforts by the United States to counter this growing problem will result in increased pressures on Canada, as Chinese migrants persist in seeking to acquire a foothold in North America. Canada should anticipate the arrival of large numbers of Chinese boat people off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in the years to come.
The views expressed herein are those of the author, who may be contacted by writing to :
CSIS P.O.Box 9732 Postal Station T Ottawa, Ontario K1G 4G4 FAX: (613) 842-1312
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