Foreign Labour Migrants in China: Opportunities and Challenges

The article is aimed at the analysis of labour migration to the People’s Republic of China in the beginning of the 21st century. This process has been developing rapidly since the end of the 1970s. In recent decades, the migration flow to China has increased dramatically, both in the sphere of the unskilled labour and in hi-tech industry, as well as in tertiary activity. Labour migration has already become a factor of China’s economic development. While Russian area specialists and international relations experts have successfully studied the migration processes inside China, little research has been done on the labour migratnts from abroad in China. The authors pay attention to such aspects as the composition of migration flow to China, the areas of migrants’ activity, the special features of the legal framework and the attitude of Chinese society towards migrants. The research is based on Chinese and other sources such as statistics, legal framework, non-governmental organisations’ reports and mass media. The authors conclude that China, in spite of considerable positive developments in the regulation of migration processes and gaining benefits from migrants’ employment for national economy and development, particularly in hi-tech industry, has not found solution for a number of problems in this sphere. The list of these problems includes social vulnerability of the migrants, human rights violations; lack of possibility to protect their rights; different  types of crime, discrimination and xenophobia. The situation is to a large extent influenced by specific disapproval of foreigners, rooted in civilisational mentality of the Chinese society. Its specific attitude towards foreigners involves the rejection of their values and of their way of living. At the same time, this attitude is combined with the ambitions of the government and businessmen to continue the use of migrant labour in order to reach their goals in a shorter time and with a considerable cost cutting.

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