China Radio International: A new Chinese report on migration now shows that one-third of rich Chinese people, with a net worth of more than 16-million-U.S-dollars, has emigrated overseas. According to the first annual report of Chinese International Migration, many of China’s super-rich have singled out a better education system in the West as the main driver of moving abroad. As a result, the report has raised concerns over a capital and brain drain prompted by the exodus of the country’s wealthy and young talent population. Now for more on the China’s migration, CRI’s Zheng Chenguang spoke to Dr. Wang Huiyao, Director General of the Center for China and Globalization and co-author of the Annual Report of Chinese International Migration.

Wang Huiyao: In the last thirty years, China has actually developed very quickly on economy and there is a large middle class that has been cultivated. And, so we see from elites and some of the investment immigrants are now able to command wealth and actually invest overseas. And we see more people probably not happy with the environment or education that they are enjoying in China and now would like to develop overseas. Particularly on the education of their children, I think the Chinese education reform is lagging behind, and also there are some constraints on environment and pollution and all other things. But also there is an economic reason for that too, because I think the real estate market is bit slow at its pace in China, and many people are not happy with it and would like to keep the investment return by investing in overseas property market. And that also trigged a lot people going overseas.

China Radio International: The report also says that nearly half of the high net worthy individuals has plans or intentions to immigrate overseas. Is it saying that more people would be going overseas?

Wang Huiyao: This trend will definitely continue as more people, more students going out, more tourists going out, and more economic exchange between China and the rest of the world. This group of people I call them “sea gull” rather than “sea turtles” would be more back and forth. I think one of the differences current immigrants and early immigrants is that early immigrants were settled in these countries, would never return, never back and forth too much. But this kind of new style Chinese immigrants, even though they immigrate to other countries, they still keep a strong tie to home country, and back and forth very often. So in a sense, we will have these “sea gulls” moving around, to take benefits to China and the outside world. I think one of the problems is that probably we couldn’t have such a large percentage of people going out, and maybe going away with a lot of capitals, while China right now needs employment, needs investment, need entrepreneurial skills…

China Radio International: Should we be worried about the new wave of immigration may bring about a brain drain in China if this trend is to continue?

Wang Huiyao: That’s correct. I think that is absolutely. This brain drain is actually happening. Because for example, China has now about 2.5 million students going out since China opened up. There is only about 1 million has been returned. So it’s about one third, something like that return, two thirds are still out. So there is a large brain drain for China. One of the solutions for that though, I think, it’s not realistic to have all the immigrants coming back. Normally for students and immigrants, if we can have 50 percent coming back, that would be international standard. But I think the challenge for China, is that China really has to start to attract foreign immigrants. China should start up immigration bureau and also start up immigration, investor immigration category and skill immigration category to attract people’s talents from other countries, for example to attract entrepreneurs from Silicon Valleys, from Korea, from India, Bangalore areas for IT talent, for example. So that will really create a complement for those of Chinese immigrants who couldn’t come back. For example, in June the National People’s Congress has passed the new Entry and Exit Law which stapled for the first time there is a talent visa category has been put into place. So people in the future can apply for a talent visa can try it on, starting from July this year.