Advertisement
Opinion | Expat exodus is bad for China, bad for the US and bad for the world
- Stringent pandemic policies and tax law changes are driving expatriates away, eroding business and diplomatic pillars
- With so many foreigners leaving, examples of good US-China people-to-people relations will become increasingly hard to find
Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
65
At a time when China’s role on the world stage is growing, it is also becoming more isolated and less international. The number of foreigners working in China’s two most important cities has declined sharply in the past decade.
In Shanghai, China’s international and commercial centre, the number of expatriates fell more than 20 per cent in the past decade from more than 208,000 to around 163,000.
The numbers are even more extreme in Beijing. The number of foreigners has fallen by more than 40 per cent since 2010, to about 63,000. By comparison, Luxembourg has around 630,000 total residents, almost half of whom are foreign workers.
Several reasons lie behind the drop. As China’s labour force has developed and improved, more companies are replacing foreign managers with locals. This is to be expected.
But the other causes of the decline in expatriates are more pernicious. The exodus is accelerating as stringent pandemic policies prompt foreigners to rethink their commitment to working in China. These departures are eroding important business and diplomatic pillars. That is bad for China, the United States and the rest of the world.
01:51
China steps up zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19 as Delta fears grow ahead of Beijing Olympics
China steps up zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19 as Delta fears grow ahead of Beijing Olympics
For China, which has perhaps benefited more than almost any other country from the synergy of East and West, a more closed country would not be the best possible version of itself. China would lose the benefits it has enjoyed in the past four decades as the country has opened up.
Advertisement