“The world is entering a new dispensation in terms of immigration”. Those were the dry words of Irish mainstream journalist Mick Clifford on a late night political talk show where a panel discussed national backlash against state-sponsored mass immigration in Ireland. He went on to say government thus has a duty to condition the population to accept it, which is quite a thing for a journalist to say. He stressed that immigration is going to be an increasing reality and consequently we are going to have to change the way we live. I doubt the habitual viewer of this programme quite grasped the magnitude of what this man was saying to them in their living rooms. Perhaps the effect of a grey man in a grey suit on television made it seem authoritative, reasonable, rational, inevitable, boring almost - but in fact what he was saying is objectively fringe, baseless and extreme.
The world of course is a large varied place. This particular pundit wanted the audience to take for granted that rates of immigration necessitating massive migrant plantation centres to be opened in your local military barracks, schools and old folks homes at 3am under police escort against the wishes of the entire communities and the nation as a whole is just the world being the world - a convenient alibi.
It got me thinking about immigration and the world, and so I began researching rates of immigration globally. Predictably enough, it turns out that some countries have high immigration, some low, some in the middle. What stood out most though was one particular country which came dead last in immigration rates. Perhaps an obscure micro-nation that can hardly be deemed indicative of the world? Actually, one of the most populous countries. A rapidly advanced nation which is synonymous with the word “future” and indeed globalisation. I am of course talking about China.
It turns out that China’s approach to immigration and diversity is not just a statistical tidbit, but is of great global geostrategic and civilisational significance, the magnitude of which I believe is underappreciated. As one report put it, “The Chinese are the last major racist great power, soon to be superpower, and so their beliefs, and the strategic consequences of their beliefs, are very significant to comprehend”.
Let's start with a quick look at the numbers. It’s important to remember that while China does publish data, like all national population data it isn’t gospel and crucially they don’t delineate by ethnicity. This matters because there are various definitions of foreigner in China depending on the context. For the most part it’s straightforward. To be Chinese is to be ethnically Han. An American citizen named Ashley who has no cultural or linguistic ties or ever set foot in China will be viewed as fundamentally Chinese based on her ethnicity alone. Meanwhile someone born and raised in China with native linguistic fluency but of non-Chinese ethnicity will never and could never be Chinese. They are and will always be a foreigner.
So is Chineseness always strictly ethnic? Not quite. Firstly there are 55 officially recognized ethnic minorities in Chinese borders including Tibetans, Mongols, Manchus etc. making up 8.89% of the population. Most of these people live in their own distinct regions which were historically absorbed by Han China to consolidate its frontiers and address national defense concerns. They are effectively seperate territories of their own under Chinese state sovereignty much like Chechnya in Russia. The attitude of the state-forming Han nation to its suzerainties is complicated and has changed over time. At the extremes some say minorities are given special privileges and preferential treatment by the Chinese state much like minorities in the west, while others claim the Chinese government is carrying out genocide of groups like Uighurs. More likely though, minorities are seen as seperate and different albeit legitimately Chinese in the sense of statehood, perhaps racial cousins, supported and accepted as a sort of peripheral cultural trinket under Han supremacy. These minorities are mostly confined to their own regions such as Tibet and Manchuria because of the “Hukou” system in China which regulates internal migration.
Secondly, and this is what complicates the data, it appears that despite ethnicity generally being the crux of Chinese identity, it is not so when the state publishes population data about foreigners. It would appear that ethnically Chinese diaspora who return to China for a temporary stay or who go on to receive a Green card or become “naturalised” are for administrative purposes classed as foreigners. It is not spelled out officially, but other sources seem to indicate this. In my research I found many references to ethnically Chinese immigrants as “foreign”.1
Due to this ambiguity in the data I am obliged to do a certain amount of back of the envelope work. Doing so however is more likely to be true than official numbers i.e. I can quote the official state number for green cards and naturalisations, but if all accounts indicate that the vast majority of those people are essentially already Chinese, it’s misleading to not factor it in. So I’ll take official state numbers and filter them through anecdotal accounts of what the ethnic breakdown is likely to be. Of course the census data I’m using could itself be flawed and my extrapolations could be slightly off, but the numbers here are so stark that even if they were wrong an order of magnitude, over or under, it wouldn’t really affect the salience.
With that said here are my estimates2:
Non-ethnically Chinese foreigners in China over 3 months - 422,849
Non-ethnically Chinese holders of a “green card” - 3,000
Non-ethnically Chinese “naturalised” foreigners - 1660
If those numbers aren’t blowing your mind yet then remember the population of China is 1.4 billion. To put that in perspective let’s compare it to my country, Ireland. If these numbers were broken down proportionally to an Irish scale, it would equate to 1510 non-Irish foreigners residing in the country for over 3 months. Of those, how many with conditional rights to remain in the country in the medium term (5-10 years)? A whopping 11. And those naturalised with permanent citizenship? 6.
Additionally, China has only 583 non-Chinese refugees on its books (the country has more billionaires). In Irish terms that would be two refugees. Ireland took in 2 so-called asylum seekers in 2022 alone. Oh wait I got that wrong, it was 2 every on average every 12 minutes.
Even if you go with the 2020 census figure on the amount of foreigners in China (the one that includes Chinese diaspora and former citizens) it is 845,697 whereas in the Irish census of 2022, 23% of people identified as something other than white Irish, nearly 1.2million people. If you discount the “Chinese foreigners” in China, Ireland probably hosts somewhere in the region of 3 times as many non-indigeonous people. Not per capita, just full stop. This despite being 280 times smaller in terms of overall population.
China has naturalised an estimated 1660 non-Chinese foreigners as citizens. Meanwhile according to one data analyst company, 150,000 Chinese went to the US to birth babies in 2018 alone. From 2004 to 2016 China issued 11,000 or so ten-year residence permits. During that same period, America, with a quarter of China’s population, issued nearly 12m green cards. Even with the numbers laid bare, the sheer asymmetry is hard to fathom.
“According to the Migration Policy Institute, the Chinese government’s stated goal for their immigration policy is to promote economic development and national security, while maintaining social stability. These goals have led China to discourage migrants who were not of Chinese ethnic origin, and to only grant permanent status to people without Chinese ethnic backgrounds if they are important business or scientific leaders, or have made “outstanding contributions” to China.
A variety of standard measures are used to control immigration like rigorous checks at entry points and making immigrants reapply for their visa at frequent intervals under very selective and opaque criteria. Many online and other services such as booking train tickets can require appropriate government identification, making life very difficult for illegal immigrants. Tasking employers, landlords, and the general public with monitoring the immigration status of foreigners via rewards and punishments i.e. carrot and stick, represents a de facto decentralization of immigration law enforcement. Finally, immigrants who overstay their visa are heavily fined and/or imprisoned before being ejected from the country.
Beyond these practical measures, China uses racism which is a part of their national identity. China has a long history of racism and it remains a key component of how they see the world, their central place in it, and the world’s other inhabitants. Today it acts as an organic national defense mechanism in tandem with state policy. Chinese social media is awash with commentary that would make the average western racist blush, while “Officials boast of a single Chinese bloodline dating back thousands of years. In 2017 Xi Jinping, China’s supreme leader, told Donald Trump, then America’s president: “We people are the original people, black hair, yellow skin, inherited onwards. We call ourselves the descendants of the dragon.”
A surprisingly interesting Pentegon report titled: “THE STRATEGIC CONSEQUENCES OF CHINESE RACISM: A Strategic Asymmetry for the United States” is well worth a look on this. In short, it lays out the history of race as the central value of Chinese civilisation and the modern Chinese nation state. It goes on to detail the strategic consequences of Chinese racism for power competition between China and America, and offer prescriptions for how the US regime should accordingly act. The author admits “As lamentable as it is, Chinese racism helps to make the Chinese a formidable adversary. There are three critical consequences that result from this. The first is the sense of unity the Chinese possess. Second, it allows the Chinese to have a strong sense of identity, which in turn permits them to weather adversity, and to be focused and secure confidence that the rest of the nation is with them. Third, China is not plagued by self-doubt or guilt about its past.”
Many western analysts however say Chinese racism could play a significant role in its undoing. The basic argument is that China has sub-replacement fertility and without mass immigration the population will decline rapidly throughout the 21th century becoming top-heavy with too many elderly dependent on too small of a productive demographic creating a disgruntled domestic population, a weaker economy and a less powerful China internationally. They will miss out on the dynamism, ambition and enrichment of immigrants, so the story goes. China’s seemingly inevitable trajectory to world’s largest economy will be stymied by their population decline, while the US hitherto doomed to fade will maintain primacy due to mass immigration. Some estimates have the US population exceeding that of China by 2100, 541 million to 494 million respectively. It’s highly unlikely to be that pronounced but the idea in general that both populations could approach parity is not unrealistic, and the fact that western regime intelligentsia are focusing on it is significant.
One would be tempted to use the cliches of “liberalism vs authoritarianism” and “democracy vs dictatorship” but any serious thinker who is being honest will recognise that such a framework is merely western propaganda on the level of a Harry Potter story. Both China and the west have the capacity to vacillate between these poles depending on the context. Activists critical of immigration, diversity and WW2 historiography for example in the west are routinely persecuted.
Take for example in China “A 2020 draft law that would have expanded permanent residency rights for high-income immigrants stirred up a torrent of criticism. In an example of how public controversy around immigration can influence stability-oriented Chinese policymakers, authorities responded by swiftly shelving the law”. Meanwhile the public when polled in the west usually say they want less immigration, yet all they seem to get is more no matter who they vote for.
In the Pentagon report, it admits that “If, in contemporary Germany, a leading intellectual were to identify the people of that country according to their physical features (“blond hair and blue eyes”) and represent them as a descendant of a homogenous group (“the Aryans”), he would be expelled from the public sphere. In China, he is venerated.”
Why in a supposedly liberal society where all varieties of sacrilege and obscenity are protected would such basic observations about indigenous traits be grounds for excommunication? Surely it’s just another point of view? It’s because as a matter of unilaterally decided upon regime doctrine and authoritarian enforcement, there can be no indigenous people, there can be no natives and thus no nation, no demos, barely a polity. It’s hard to think of anything more definitively anti-democratic than that.
The fundamental dividing line between China and the US empire is not a question of wildly different economic models. It's not even something as straightforward as a holy war, race war or a battle of civilisations per say. There is on one side an ancient civilisation comprised of the largest ethnic group in the history of the world, the Han. America by comparison, hitherto the most economically and militarily powerful empire in history aims to be completely post-national or even post-civilisational this century and is already halfway there. In that sense it's not so much a battle of civilisations, but a battle for civilisation itself.
Columnist Daniel Macarthy wrote - “In 2050, China will be grayer. But old men don’t start revolutions, and their dependence on the state is all the greater. America’s wealthy whites will be old, too, and younger, poorer Americans, taught to find fault with the nation’s past, may well wonder why they should sweat to pay for the former majority’s retirement — or for its pledges to Europe and East Asia. Population matters, but continuity of character matters more. Without that, a nation ceases to be.”
Without a shared culture, natural bonds, loyalty or a tangible stake in an actual society you are left with a mercenary polity. Mercenaries, as Machiavelli pointed out, were too individualistic in their own personal gain and wealth and lacked discipline and union. He believed that the lack of care mercenaries had for the state they fought for put those nations in more danger than safety. Just imagine how it might go when Uncle Sam calls on Rajeet, Juan, Chiumbo, Brayden, Ahmed or indeed Chang to fight and die for an island 8,000 miles away off the coast of China.
Regarding the idea that there is a demographic aging/fertility crisis which must be solved with endless mass immigration, it is a lie top to bottom. This Australian paper goes through the reasons why basically every aspect of that theory is not just wrong, but is so obviously wrong it could only be a knowing falsehood, “That the proposed solution does not solve their alleged problem raises questions about the true motives behind such claims.” Demographic aging/low fertility is not in itself a crisis, and even if it were, which it isn’t, an insane ponzi scheme wouldn’t be a solution.
The good news is that this study among several others concludes that there is very little chance China will go anywhere near mass immigration. This despite much hand-wringing and concern-trolling about it in the west. China was supposed to become an “open society” after WTO accession, but the American regime got played. The possibility of neutralising a major civilisation while colonising their massive market was, it appears, too much to resist.
China currently launches the equivalent of a Royal Navy every 4 years, and in 30 years Shanghai went from having no metro system at all to having the largest most sophisticated and affordable one in the world. This year China became the world's largest exporter of cars. All with the indispensable help of virtually no immigration.
But you can’t please everyone. President of the EU Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, Jörg Wuttke, travelled through China 44 times on domestic flights in the pandemic year of 2020. The frequent flyer noticed that almost all passengers were Chinese, “Only once I walked by a foreigner at an airport. That was so unusual that I turned around to look at him.” To Wuttke, it felt like stepping back in time to the 1980s, when China was opening up and foreigners were a rare sight. Back then, hope resonated that foreigner policies would soon change: “They needed us for their reforms, and they wanted us in China.” Now, however, he senses the opposite trend: “Worst of all, no one seems to mind if there are fewer foreigners.”
That last line perfectly encapsulates the demented mindset of western so-called elites. Why should Chinese people in their own country mind that there are few foreigners? It’s never quite explained. We’re meant to take it as a moral first principle that peacefully existing among like people is a sin. “It needs to be thought of as a clash between right and wrong, racism and antiracism, a racist state and an anti-racist one. Just as in the Cold War, the United States is on the right side.”
The policies of forced diversity and replacement immigration however are domestically very unpopular in the west and causing major instability. They are also reviled internationally along with other social agendas like trangenderism. One of the hopes in Washington is that if China can be exposed to it’s international allies as “racist” they will suffer diplomatic consequences, specifically in Africa. The reality though is that Africans we don’t really care. So long as the no-strings bilateral trade deals and infrastructure assistance continues, everyone is happier minding their own business in their own countries. This is an inexorable reality the US regime seems incapable of accepting.
2023 is a world historical turning point in my opinion. It has been known for centuries that China would rise, and sure enough in recent decades is has risen. Now as the rapid growth phase tapers off and demographics shrink the real test begins as to whether China will truly take the batton of civilisation from a declining west. During the century of humiliation, several Chinese thinkers suggested their misfortune was bourne out of a civilisational allergy to progress while the west had embraced radical progress socially, politically and scientifically to great avail at the time.
Perhaps they were on to something, but they couldn't account for a different landscape centuries later. It could be that European civilisation burned too bright too quickly, and now China is taking the chance to maintain it's traditional pragmatism learning from the west in economic and technological progress but avoiding the capitalist pursuit of infinite growth and firesale of its civilisational inheritance via policies such as mass immigration.
Xi Jinping speaking recently said “China's economy is an ocean not a puddle. Sometimes the ocean is calm, sometimes stormy. A change of weather can wipe out a puddle but the ocean will still be the Ocean. China is eternal".
The world population is set the shrink before the end of this century. Once Africa tops out that's it, nowhere left to immigrate warm bodies from to prop up a socially catastrophic demographic pyramid scheme. What then will be left of civilisation globally? Perhaps a few city states like Dubai, elite post-national enclaves enjoying rare civility and order held together with money and an iron fist. India has too many problems like social and ethnic stratification and lack of education that will impede it's civilisational prospects. The west everywhere you look is already in freefall.
As the smoke clears this century, China will stand alone not because of it's economic and scientific successes, but for its ability to achieve them without being poisoned in the process. As the rest of the civilised world becomes a diverse looted neo-feudal wasteland, China will be viewed ever more apparently as an ocean of social harmony, order and culture - the future of civilisation itself.
“Beijing’s latest policy announcement allows foreign citizens with Chinese heritage to apply for a special multiple-entry visa granting a residency period of up to five years”
“In 2020, a government census estimated there were around 850,000 overseas nationals living on the mainland, but this data includes an unspecified number of former Chinese citizens who have taken another nationality.”
“An overwhelming share of China’s green cards go to foreigners of Chinese ancestry.”
“They include ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese foreigners…. Foreign nationals of Chinese descent, both first-generation emigrants that have changed nationality and their descendants, make up a significant part of the foreign population in China.”
“…while there is no overt mention of ethnicity in the text of the regulations, anecdotal evidence suggests that those few who do succeed in obtaining Permanent Residence are disproportionately of Overseas Chinese origin.”
Hong Kong, South Korea, and the Philippines provide so many of China’s migrants because of their proximity and the fact that each country has a large ethnic Chinese population: The Chinese government promotes educated ethnic Chinese migrating “back” to China
Estimates vary on how many Chinese green cards issued. One here says 11,000 overall by 2016 noting “an overwhelming share of China’s green cards go to foreigners of Chinese ancestry”, another says 20,000 issued to “foreigners” as of 2019. Another says “The last time official numbers were published in articles in 2018 they held at around 10,000 GC holders in the country - with around 90% of the holders being ethnic Chinese and/or former PRC citizens”. I’m being generous I think to settle on let’s say 30,000 as of writing and will run with the idea that around 10% of those go to actual ethnic foreigners, so 3,000.
Regarding naturalised, a 2020 estimate in The Economist of 16,595 naturalised citizens in total. One would expect this so be even more exclusive against non-ethnic Chinese that green cards are but i’ll use 10% anyway, so 1660. This 2016 video from a China critic claims albeit not cited that around 900 non-ethnic Chinese has been naturalised since year 2000. It’s in the same ballpark as my estimate based on The Economist which is reassuring.
As for the number of overall foreign residents, I assume that would be less exclusive against ethnic non-Chinese, but how much is unclear. Many signs would indicate a majority of some extent are ethnically Chinese i.e. most are from the countries with the largest Chinese diasporas, and official policy is to make entry easier for ethnic Chinese. So I’m settling on a straightforward half of the 845,697 “foreigners” as per 2020 census, so 422,849.
«The good news is that this study among several others concludes that there is very little chance China will go anywhere near mass immigration.» How is this good news? Why is China not bearing any of the burden of the mass-migration agenda that Red China promotes for Western countries—both via official People’s Republic of China governmental meddling and ethnic Chinese lobbies in Western countries who organize to attack historic White majority populations. You noted yourself how the Chinese orchestrate systemic birthing fraud schemes to subversively exploit US citizenship laws and flood America with more co-ethnic Fifth Columnists: «China has naturalised an estimated 1660 non-Chinese foreigners as citizens. Meanwhile according to one data analyst company, 150,000 Chinese went to the US to birth babies in 2018 alone.»
America is not the only target; other Anglosphere countries (Oz, NZ, Canada) have it even worse with Chinese mass-migration in proportional terms. Whereas PRC is allowed to get away with „racist“ immigration laws in the 21st century, ☭CCP-backed Chinese ethnic lobbies in Western countries lay on guilt thick against White heritage populations—who founded and built Western countries—over past ‘discriminatory’ immigration laws (e.g. ‘White Australia’ policy; Canadian & US Chinese Exclusion Acts which totally barred Chinese immigration til mid-20th century.)
Europe too is in China’s crosshairs. Recall in 2020 Italy became an early epicentre of WuFlu outbreak due to large numbers of Chinese immigrants insourced to replace Italian workers and undercut European wages in the Milan fashion industry. As Xi’s PRC was loading planes full of infected patients from Wuhan to Rome, Beijing state media China Global TV was promoting a „Hug a Chinese“ ad campaign showing them walk up to Italians in Florence and ask them to hug random Chinese people to oppose the „real viruses“ of „racism” and „xenophobia”.
You seem to have a prior article critical of Zionism? Why praise China for behaving like a much larger Israel—also a „racist“ state with a racial identity based on ancient mythical origins like Chairman Xi’s „yellow dragon“—and which also engages in massive double standards when it comes to attitudes on racial identity that its ethnic lobbies promote in Western countries…Chinese Communist Party should be condemned, not praised, for its atrocious conduct worldwide. CCP treats its own minorities like Palestinians, while CCP finances subversive antiwhite militants like Black Lives Matter terrorists to destabilize and destroy the Occident.
China is no friend to the Irish in Ireland nor any historic White Western ethnic majority nation. China has plenty of room for the „diversity” it loves to promote in the West, especially with CCP’s impending One-Child Policy demographic collapse.
On a final note, it kind of begs the question as to why so many millions of ethnic Han Chinese born in their own yellow dragon Han ethnostate still want to flee le soi-disant „superpower“ China and mass-immigrate to Western countries (like all other Third World populations) despite all our modern problems in the West—problems the Chinese themselves help foment.
Conversely, even if Red China were not a dystopian antihuman hivemind totalitarian police state able to enforce ‘draconian’ immigration laws…were Chairman Xi to announce he was opening PRC borders and inviting anyone around the world who wants to live in China to move thither, I see no demand to migrate to China among people who have the option of living in the Occidental First World.
Excellent and balanced overview, but we must caution against excessive Sinotriumphialism. China has always had a very large and highly intelligent population yet they have historically underperformed.
I suspect this is because their cultural predilictions is towards stability rather than innovation. Europeans are very hard to organise and tend to splinter constantly: just look at the mess that is Europe. But the upside is greater innovative capacity. Rapid rise, rapid fall. China is more likely to be merely moderately innovative at best. They can brute force their way through on sheer human capital power alone.
The paranoia in Western capitals is largely delusional. China does not, in my view, seek to replace the Western system. The Chinese are at root dispassionate and apolitical merchants. They just want to trade and be left alone. The equivalence of "white saviour complex" doesn't exist. But the flipside is that Chinese people are terrible at influencing others. Their diplomacy and soft power is non-existant.
I think the best way to think of China is that of a giant fortress. Big enough not to be overrun but too stagnant and inflexible to truly move world affairs. I'm pretty optimistic about China achieving technological self-sufficiency but I think their economic mismanagement (especially with exploding debt) is really embarrassing given how poor China still is (per capita income lower than Mexico).
All in all, China is likely to be underperforming both the hopes of its optimists and the fears of its detractors. I agree, however, that demography is the worst possible argument. Much better would be to focus on China's traditional weaknessess (lack of will to power, excessive conformity, comparatively low innovation given high IQ base etc). Tthe West is stronger than many give it credit for. I suspect that while the "Unipolar World" may be over, the Chinese will be unable to replace the Western system. The result will be indecisive chaos but no breakdown or collapse.