China is losing its wealth and capital along with a rising number of talents to foreign countries in an ongoing wave of emigration.
A latest article published on China Economic Weekly pointed that the emigration trend has been catching on in recent years, making China the world’s largest contributor of emigrants, as well as the No.1 exporter of domestic talents, according to a 2007 report by China Social Academy.
China witnessed its first wave of emigration in the late 1970s with a huge number of laborers seeking livelihood abroad; the second noticeable flow of emigrants dawned in the early 1990s, marked by the trend of elite students going study abroad; and the third one spans from the beginning of the 21st century till today, with the nouveau riche businessmen and highly-achieving industry professionals continuously joining the fad.
One million and seven hundred thousand Chinese students have gone abroad to study since 1978, yet only around a quarter of them have returned.
The loss of its top brains and the nouveau riche over the last three decades not only drained China of its national wealth, high caliber personnel, tax revenue and consumption capacity, but cast a shadow over its goal of building a society with middle-class in the backbone.
China is paying a huge price for its fast-growing wealth; people’s happiness is being corroded by the climbing cost of living, environmental pollution, food safety woes, heavy tax burdens and inadequate welfares.
As the main force of investment-related emigrants, China’s nouveau riche values the freer environment for entrepreneurs in the developed countries.
The U.S. has inaugurated a series of stimulus measures to boost its global competiveness since the financial crisis, for example offering low-interest and interest-free loans to business developers. Aiming to take in emigrant investors to renew its sluggish real estate market, the U.S. Congress proposed a bill that would allow the issuance of green cards to foreigners who purchase house properties worth more than 500 thousand U.S. dollars.
This could be a huge allure to China’s capital holders, who are strapped by the country’s behindhand rules in venture regulation, intellectual property protection, income distribution and economic stimulus policies.
The alarm is already on for China to take actions to prevent a possible large-scale outflow of capital and national wealth, as a few domestic private enterprise owners are opting to emigrate through transferring their capitals abroad for the soaring cost of manufacturing.
It’s an urging strategic task for China to retain on its own soil the material wealth, and most importantly, its brain resources through efforts of ending the monopoly of state-owned enterprises, pushing forward fair play for a free market and lightening the overall tax burdens.
