The New Chinese Immigration to Japan: Between mobility and integration

[Aepsilons]

By: Dr. Hélène Le Bail, Ph.D.

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Chinese students in large numbers have settled in Japan: a rate of immigration recalling that of the early twentieth century. The inflow has brought about the creation of a Chinese community whose members are highly qualified and economically well integrated into society. Japan’s new Chinese residents are intellectuals by profession. Their lifestyle and the way they present themselves set them apart from traditional immigrants. The concepts of “transnational entrepreneurs” and “expatriates” are called on here to account for the connections they maintain with China and Japan.

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In 2003, according to Japanese government figures, 462,396 Chinese people were living in Japan, making up a quarter of its foreign residents. Although Koreans make up the country’s largest foreign community, the Chinese are by far the most numerous new arrivals since the end of the 1970s. This article deals with these Chinese newcomers, who differ from the traditional image of immigrants in two ways: they are exceptionally well qualified, enjoying high socioeconomic status—12% belong to the most favoured social classes while nearly all could be counted as middle class; and, having created flourishing and active ethnic business activity, the Chinese newcomers are not observed to have segregated themselves economically or residentially as they have in Europe.


This situation is partially explained by Japan’s policy on immigration. This has been modified since the end of the 1980s but remains very restrictive, allowing only a small number of qualified workers to come in. There is a significant gap between this immigration policy and the presence in Japan of a large number of unskilled or semi-skilled workers. The gap is explained by the recourse to roundabout methods of importing low-skilled foreign labour, such as running trainee programmes, opening the borders to people of Japanese descent in Latin America (the Nikkeijin) or issuing student visas. Faced with industry’s labour requirements, “the government consciously resorts to side door or back door [immigration] policies”. In this context, the plan to bring the number of foreign students up to 100,000 by the year 2000 (a project first announced in 1983), provided a privileged immigration route for the Chinese. Chinese students accept unskilled employment: for many, the jobs are temporary, lasting just long enough to fund their studies. Once they have graduated from Japanese universities, those deciding to stay on generally attain skilled posts, even highly skilled posts. The temporary nature of unskilled jobs helps perhaps to explain the low level of segregated activity. And access to skilled employment explains the wide residential dispersal. Above all, the fact that a large number of Chinese immigrants should have come in via the selective route of study accounts for their social mobility.


In its first part, this article describes the processes by which, as they settled in Japan, the migrants set up networks of student immigrants; it will look at how the new migrant inflows explain the present characteristics of the Chinese population in Japan; and it will seek to explain how its high level of skills and lack of ethnic separatism have favoured social mobility in Japan.


In the second part, the article looks more specifically at the roles played by transnational entrepreneurs and expatriates, and examines how their sense of place, their connections with their society of origin—China—and of residence—Japan—throw new light on research in terms of returning home or of integration into the host country.

 

[Aepsilons]

The Old and New Chinese Immigrants to Japan: Two Different and Distinct Communities


The Japanese language uses the English terms “oldcomers” and “newcomers” to designate, respectively, immigrants who arrived before 1945 and those who have arrived since the second half of the 1970s. The oldcomers are, in the main, Koreans, but also include a small number of Chinese people, mostly from Taiwan. This article is concerned only with the newcomers, originating mostly from mainland China. These two inflows of Chinese immigrants have few features in common.

Unlike other countries in the organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Japan carried out its reconstruction and launched its post-war economic take-off without recourse to immigration. It was not until the mid-1970s that the government began opening its frontiers to foreign workers. China, for its part, liberalised its emigration policy only from 1978 onwards. So the inflow of Chinese migrants to Japan was halted for more than thirty years.

The very slow rise in Japan’s Chinese population between the 1950s and 1980 contrasts with the constantly increasing inflow over the past twenty-five years (see Table 1). Chinese residents numbered 52,896 in 1980; the figure rose to 150,339 in 1990, and reached 462,396 by 2003. When one takes into account those people in irregular situations, estimated by the Ministry of Justice at some 30,000 in 2004, together with those who have taken Japanese nationality, the total number of Chinese people or people of Chinese origin is up around 600,000. Before the 1980s, the number of long-term immigrants was about 50,000 people; it cannot have increased by very much, given the low birthrate of the Japanese. So we may estimate the number of Chinese people (or people of Chinese origin), who have arrived in Japan since the end of the 1970s and living in Japan, at 550,000 people.


1. Population of Chinese Nationality Officially Registered in Japan

The gulf between the communities, the oldcomers and the newcomers, has as much to do with the successes of some as with the difficulties encountered by others. In the course of interviews conducted in Tokyo in 2004-2005, the newcomers who have succeeded in society often expressed their respect for the earlier generations of immigrants (whom they currently refer to as old huaqiao, while emphasising the socio-cultural gulf that divides them.

The President of the Association of Chinese Scientists and Engineers in Japan says: “Relations between one group of Chinese people living in Japan and another are often virtually non-existent. As between the newcomers and the old huaqiao, this is due to differences in education. Ourselves, we’re mostly employed in the high-tech sector, while the old huaqiao are very often in trade or catering: these are different worlds”

Beginning in the early 1990s, when the inflow of Chinese students swelled rapidly, the newcomers’ image deteriorated in the wake of scandals about phoney students, illegal immigrants and criminal behaviour, these various elements becoming lumped together in the media and the public mind. The older generation of immigrants then sought to distance themselves from these newcomers in order to preserve their own image as a model community. Attitudes on both sides hardened, and it is only recently that the communities have come together for common projects. In December 2004 for instance, they set up a joint committee to consider how best to teach Chinese culture and language to children of the second and third generations. The older generation, seeing their community losing its dynamism, became aware that they had every interest in co-operating with the newcomers.

The two communities had kept apart from each other all the more easily since they rarely had any family connections, and since the old Chinese community offered few work opportunities to the newcomers. Indeed, the latter hardly ever sought to revive former ties. From the 1980s onward, new migrant networks had been established.

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Chinese Ph.D students in Utsonomiya University, Japan. The bulk of new Chinese immigrants to Japan have been graduate or doctoral learners, who , in majority of cases, settled in Japan and integrate well with the Japanese community.

Chinese graduate students in Japan; wearing traditional Japanese attire and partake in cultural events.
Chinese scholarly immigrants assimilate well into Japanese society.