Influence of Overseas Chinese?

Chinese writer Wang Qijun (王其钧) suggested in his book 苦乐移民路 (The Bittersweet Path to Immigration, 1999) that emigration will help ease China's over-population.

He also believed that with the increase of more overseas Chinese, China's international position or profile can be further strengthened.

I find it hard to agree with both of his views.

First, no matter how many Chinese choose to emigrate, the numbers will never be overwhelming, given 1) the difficulties and high economic costs involved in doing so, and 2) China's continued economic growth and opportunities.

Besides, there will also be reservations on the part of foreign governments (mainly the United States, Canada, Australia, and other western countries) in opening their doors further to Chinese immigrants, especially those without strong professional or academic qualifications.

Furthermore, there is now a strong tendency among many western-trained Chinese professionals to return to China, given the abundant opportunities in their home country. Also, given China's relative stability, and apart from a handful of obvious political activists, it will be hard for Chinese to claim political asylum.

As for Wang's second assertion that more overseas Chinese will help raise China's international profile, I find the claim highly questionable. Wang suggested that Israel's strong growth is partly due to its strong network of overseas citizens, while Russia's "failure" is due to its dearth of such a network.

There has always been large numbers of overseas Chinese for several decades now, but this has done little in raising China's international profile. This is mainly due to the poor calibre of earlier overseas Chinese (laborer, workers, people with little education, etc), as well as the bickering and disunity among overseas Chinese. As some observers have pointed out, whenever there are groups of Chinese, there is bickering over power, influence, recognition and resources.

But most pertinently, the inability to raise China's international profile by overseas Chinese is due to China's internal political situation. Changes can only come from and dictated by those wielding political (and increasingly, economic) influence WITHIN China, and not those residing far beyond its shores.

For proof, just witness how much "influence" political dissidents have after they are deported from China. These political dissidents mainly engage in 1) speaking out against China, 2) bickering and slandering other political dissidents, or 3) business. But beyond that, they do not have much of an impact, let alone influence on developments within China.