Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
(Fan 2007). Internal migration in the People's Republic of China represents
the largest flow of households in the contemporary world. The extraordinary
pace of urbanization in major cities like Shanghai, surely the poster child of
present mega-city growth in the developing world (Olds 2001), is matched
by the creation, from almost nothing, of new urban centres in the special
economic zones along the coast. Shenzhen in the Pearl River Delta of
Guangdong Province, adjacent to Hong Kong, was a small town in the
1980s but by 2005 claimed to be the centre of an urbanizing region of
10 million people. Over four million had been resident for less than a year
while over eight million did not have a hukou , or household residency permit,
a legal definition of residential rootedness (Shenzhen Data Communication
Bureau 2005; also Lin 1997; Wang and Meng 2004). Travelling in urbaniz-
ing China, one can understand Aihwa Ong's awed reaction that visiting these
explosive cities was 'like being caught up in the eye of the greatest typhoon
in the history of capitalism' (Ong 1999: 43).
The rapid modernization of China and its growing ambitions have cre-
ated opportunities but also anxieties in nearby satellite territories. Capitalists
and the rising middle class in Hong Kong and Taiwan, while huge investors
in the Mainland (Hsing 1998; Olds 2001), have also been apprehensive of
the scale of Chinese aspirations. A resolution to the middle-class dilemma
of simultaneous eagerness and wariness in engaging China commercially
has been to seek safe havens around the Pacific Rim, should circumstances
require a sudden strategic retreat. Canada, the United States, Australia,
New Zealand and Singapore, amongst others, have provided accessible
sanctuaries through student visas and immigration programmes welcom-
ing skilled workers and business people, while a portion of the Hong Kong
middle-class was permitted to take advantage of ex-colonial linkages to
Britain. Some of these trans-Pacific migrants were temporary movers from
the start: Mak (1997) writes of some Hong Kong employers holding posi-
tions open for valued staff during the two year residency in Australia
required for citizenship eligibility. But other migrants drawn by quality of
life, educational assets, and personal freedoms in the West are prepared to
move beyond the sojourner model with plans for permanent residence…
perhaps.
The Mainland itself has also become a source of trans-Pacific migrants
with the onset of liberalizing tendencies leading to the 1985 emigration law.
Canada has benefited from these reforms with the arrival of large numbers
of skilled Chinese engineers and IT workers, though many have experi-
enced difficulty in securing appropriate employment and some are consid-
ering return migration (Teo 2007). As well as these regular movements,
unknown numbers of undocumented migrants have departed Fujian
Province in particular for hazardous journeys to the United States, the
famed 'Beautiful Country' (Chin 1999), or even Europe (Pieke et al. 2004).
Search WWH ::




Custom Search