EDITOR’S NOTE: 
       Here are two news reports about population movement out of and into China: On the one hand, the rich and advantaged are deserting China to protect their gains while on the other poor laborers and opportunity-seekers (actually from all over the world including the U.S. and other Western countries) are attracted by China– this looks like a new pattern in the polarization between the rich and the poor on the global scale. This side of the picture is no blessing for China.
       But on the other side of the picture, something good might be foreboded in two senses. On the level of political economy, the aggravated rich-poor polarization further along geographical lines might be a new catalyst, which will aggravate the imbalance between capital and labor on the global level and thus accelerate the bursting of the world capitalist blain. On the level of world human-culture, the accelerated direct contact and assimilation between people of different racial-ethnic-cultural backgrounds is surely a good thing for the mutual understanding and integration between different cultures and thus for the well-being of mankind in general. Of course, the integration of ethnicity and culture will take a much longer time. Before that, the accelerated bursting of the capitalist blain will probably bring about to the world’s peoples great pains – hopefully labor pains in anticipation of the birth of a new world.

Rich Chinese Flee to Avoid Taxes, Anger
By Robert Frank
（Source）

An article in the Straits Times says the rich in China are increasingly fleeing home to avoid taxes, government crackdowns and rising popular resentment.

Some of the most popular destinations include Australia, Canada, Singapore and the U.S. While there are no specific data on the emigration of rich Chinese, the article says the number of Beijing applicants for investment-immigration visas to the U.S. doubled last year to about 1,000, according to statistics from the Beijing Entry and Exit Service Association.

The visa grants permanent residency in exchange for an investment of $500,000 or more in certain troubled sectors or regions.

Taxes are a big driver (yes, the U.S. is still lower than some countries), but security and peace-of mind also play a role. With the gap between rich and poor skyrocketing in China, the wealthy are feeling increasingly uncomfortable. “Many of these people–even the ones who are not so rich–see that the social situation in China is not stable, and will seize the opportunity to move overseas to places with less social friction,” said sociology professor Li Lulu of Renmin University.

We have our own rising resentments and wealth gaps, of course. But they pale compared to China’s. And for the sake of perspective, it is worth noting that at a time when the American rich feel persecuted, the U.S. is still a highly hospitable place to be rich.

Do you think China is a better place to be rich than America?

Foreign workers (and wives) pour into China
Kent Ewing 
（Source）

HONG KONG - Thousands of illegal Vietnamese workers are flooding into China’s Pearl River Delta region, the country’s manufacturing hub. At the same time, an increasing number of hard-up Chinese men are looking to Vietnam in search of the ideal wife.

Both stories speak volumes about changes in China’s economic and social landscape. Double-digit economic growth has returned to the nation as the world climbs out of a prolonged recession, and the social stability so fretted over by the Communist Party leadership remains largely intact. But, although its economic juggernaut continues to roll, China is not the same country that it was only a few years ago.

Illegal Vietnamese migrants are taking low-paying factory jobs that Chinese workers no longer want, and Chinese men - at least many of those who like to sound off on web blogs and in Internet chat rooms - are fed up with the soulless avarice of Chinese women and employing matchmakers to find them more "obedient" Vietnamese wives. Indeed, their predilection for brides from Vietnam has ignited a web war of words over the merits of Chinese women versus their Vietnamese counterparts.

For male netizens who have taken the plunge into a foreign marriage, the verdict is in: Vietnamese women are the best. Their testimonies abound.

A happy newlywed from the eastern city of Nanjing writes of his Vietnamese bride: "[She is] not greedy, not lazy, not too free, not arrogant, not money-worshipping. [She is] pretty, hard-working, kind-hearted, and the key is obedient."

In other words, his Vietnamese dream girl is everything that he perceives Chinese women are not.

Another Nanjing man, 42-year-old Dai Wensheng, was so impressed by the wife he acquired during a visit to Vietnam last September that he has begun a blog organizing tours for Chinese bachelors who hope to achieve similar conjugal perfection.

Dai, the owner of a dance school who had previously been married to a Chinese woman, writes: "My ex-wife wanted LV [Louis Vuitton] bags and a new car from me while my Vietnamese wife takes care of the laundry, cooking and cleaning - and even peels the shells off shrimp for me. For the first time, I feel loved and spoiled."

Apparently, both Dai’s sentiments and tours are catching on. Vietnamese matchmaking agencies are now looking increasingly to China.

A representative of Wtovisa Vietnam Marriage Agency, located in Hanoi, recently told a South China Morning Post reporter that the agency is considering devoting 70% of its staff to its booming China market.

"In the past," Xie Junping said, "Taiwan and South Korea were the favorite destinations for Vietnamese women who wanted to marry foreigners. But we have seen a change since 2008, and more and more men from the mainland are seeking wives in Vietnam."

Cross-border marriages between Chinese and Vietnamese go back thousands of years, and the selling of "mail-order" Vietnamese brides to Chinese men has been taking place for the past 20 years or so. But this latest trend marks the first time Chinese suitors have made their way to Vietnam to woo their brides and hold a proper wedding.

On his blog, Dai tells his followers that his romantic 15-day excursion to Vietnam put him out only 35,000 yuan (US$5,123), including the cost of the wedding and the 80-table banquet that followed. "Brothers," he proselytizes, "drop the greedy, lazy and arrogant Chinese women who ask for property worth millions. Come to Vietnam for perfect wives."

What Dai fails to mention, however, is that many of his love-starved brethren have no choice but to look abroad for a mate. Thanks to China’s one-child policy, adopted in 1979, there simply are not enough Chinese women - greedy or not - to go around. Because of the traditional preference for male children in Chinese families, by 2020 China will be home to 24 million bachelors who have no prospect of finding a wife in their own country - a massive lonely hearts club with ominous social implications. Foreign brides are their only hope - and also, even if not by design, good social policy.

Meanwhile, as romantic sparks fly for Chinese men at wedding banquets in Vietnam, hordes of Vietnamese migrants, many using snakeheads (traffickers in humans) who are in cahoots with Chinese employers, are sneaking into China to take low-paying factory jobs. Again, illegal cross-border traffic into Yunnan and Guangxi provinces goes back many years, but now Vietnamese migrants are penetrating deep into the manufacturing hub of Guangdong, taking jobs formerly held by Chinese workers.

The reasons for this development are two-fold: As China’s standard of living improves, bottom-rung factory labor is no longer attractive to many Chinese workers; in addition, a labor law enacted two years ago to protect these workers now makes unprotected Vietnamese migrants more attractive hires for factory owners. In other words, China is becoming a victim of its own success.

In February, there were more than two million job vacancies in the Pearl River Delta, state media reported. In response, Guangdong Communist Party Secretary Wang Yang announced a 21.1% rise in the minimum wage starting May 1.

Wang’s announcement should be good news for Chinese workers but, coupled with a two-year-old labor law that requires employers to pay for basic benefits such as medical care and social security insurance, it has the effect of opening the door much wider for illegal migrants from Vietnam.

As illegals, the Vietnamese are willing to accept salaries well below the minimum wage and are not protected by the Labor Contract Law. Moreover, their similar appearance allows them to blend in easily with native workers to avoid detection by Guangdong police.

The minimum wage for a low-level factory worker in the Pearl River Delta is reportedly around 1,800 yuan per month, with - thanks to the labor law - double overtime pay after eight hours of work and triple pay on holidays. But factory owners can hire unskilled Vietnamese labor for as little as 1,000 yuan a month while escaping overtime and holiday pay as well as other benefits now guaranteed to Chinese workers. They can also hire Vietnamese employees during peak season and fire them in low season without offering the severance pay to which Chinese workers would be entitled.

Thus, factory owners are understandably pleased with the deluge of illegal migrants seeking work in Guangdong; some even pay people smugglers to bring workers to their factories. As for the illegal workers, mostly farmers from Vietnam, they are happy to have a job that pays more than anything they could find at home.

Indeed, so agreeable is this illicit meeting of supply and demand in Guangdong that a number of Chinese academics have called on the government to allow foreign laborers to work in China. So far, these calls have been ignored.

Instead, Guangdong police claim to be cracking down on illegal labor. According to the official Xinhua News Agency, last year provincial police deported 180 foreigners who did not have valid work permits. So far this year, 53 illegal migrants from Vietnam have been arrested in Guangxi as they traveled on a bus toward Guangdong, and 66 others were seized on another bus in the Guangdong city of Zhuhai. Police also said they discovered 24 illegal Vietnamese workers in plastics factory in another Guangdong city, Qingyuan.

But these modest arrests no doubt represent only a drop in the bucket of illegal immigration in the Pearl River Delta.

Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.

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