Foreigners in China To flee or not to flee?

Foreigners in China

To flee or not to flee?

Aug 22nd 2012, 9:23 by T.P. | BEIJING

IT MAY not count as an exodus. Indeed, it doesn’t even satisfy that hoary old journalistic definition of a trend: three examples.

Separately, a pair of expatriates long based in China have written heartfelt accounts of their decisions to leave the country. And though few in number, they have attracted a great deal of heartfelt attention from many other “old China hands”, as foreigners who have chosen to make their lives, careers and homes here sometimes like to call themselves.

As a member with 23 years’ worth of Beijing-based standing in that tribe, I read both posts with particular interest. For my part, I do not intend to leave any time soon—nor to indulge in navel-gazing about the complex weighting of the family, environmental and social reasons I have for deciding where to live. But the issues raised in these two pieces are worth considering. Foreigners, after all, are not the only ones pondering them and choosing, sometimes, to leave.

Among the small proportion of Chinese who have the means to do so, many have already taken the plunge and many more are making plans. A study issued jointly last October by the Bank of China and the Hurun Report, a wealth-research firm, found that among survey subjects with assets worth at least 10m yuan ($1.6m), 14% had already emigrated or started on the paperwork. An additional 46% said they were considering it. In March, a Beijing newspaper said that the study probably underestimated the flight of Chinese wealth.

In one of the recent expatriate accounts, an American film-maker, editor and blogger named Charlie Custer said most of his reasons were personal—and that none of them had to do with ugly threats he’d received since entering into a nasty public feud with a prominent Chinese television personality, Yang Rui. However Mr Custer did acknowledge feeling distress over China’s lack of a free press and rule of law. And he mentioned that his past couple of years had been not only “depressing” and “soul-crushing”, but also “occasionally terrifying”.

However he cited as bigger problems air pollution and food safety. These were the most important factors behind his decision to leave Beijing, after a four-year stay. “I like breathing,” and “eating also is fun,” he wrote in pithy summary.

These are not concerns to be taken lightly. Chinese officials have been struggling with their cities’ worsening smog for some years now. They are probably better focused on it now than officials in Los Angeles or London were when those cities were at comparable stages of development. Even so, it will be a long time before conditions improve. Meanwhile health officials in Beijing have acknowledged a 60% increase in the rate of lung cancer in the city over the past decade, even after factoring out any increase in smoking rates.

As Mr Custer notes in his piece, “It’s almost cliché to complain about the air quality in Beijing; it’s terrible and everyone knows it. People here just deal as best they can.” And as bad as that is on the bad days, it’s worth noting that average life expectancy in Beijing last year stood at 81.12 years. That compares admirably with 80.6 years in New York City, and 84.4 years for men in the nicer parts of London. Bad air and bad food are bad, but it seems that people do, as Mr Custer writes, “deal”.

If staying alive is the goal, it may be wiser to remove one’s head from the bilious clouds and fix them squarely on the road. One interesting study, published by the World Health Organisation last year, found that injuries from traffic accidents had a surprisingly large impact on life expectancy rates in large Chinese cities.

Another bit of useful perspective was provided this month by The Economist’s sister organisation, The Economist Intelligence Unit, which released the results of its latest liveability survey of 140 cities around the world. Beijing ranked 72nd and Shanghai 78th. That leaves them far behind the perennial top-tier garden spots like Melbourne, Vancouver and Vienna. But it also places them well ahead of such proud places as Istanbul, Dubai and Rio de Janeiro.

Of course none of that diminishes the impact of bad air and tainted food on the quality of life. These ranked high among reasons for leaving not only with Mr Custer but also in Hurun’s study with the Bank of China. As did China’s high levels of corruption, its wobbly legal environment, and its education system. In China, some people of means tend to worry about the possibility of legal probes into how they amassed their fortunes. Many of high political standing feel the need to make contingency plans for a breakdown in stability, such as some people fear could come at any time. As we wrote in May, the term “naked officials” is commonly used to describe the large number of Communist party members and government workers who prepare for the worst by sending their families and assets abroad.

An essay by Mark Kitto, a Briton who first came to China as a student in 1986, ventured into more thought-provoking realms. After living here for the past 16 years as a businessman, Mr Kitto decided he’d had enough. Some of his motivations match those of the wealthy Chinese who choose to leave. He cited concerns that “the air my family breathes and the food we eat is doing us physical harm” but added that the “one overriding reason I must leave China” is the need to give his children a decent education.

Other aspects of Mr Kitto’s experience might only make sense to a foreigner, and a disillusioned one at that. “I have fallen out of love, woken from my China Dream,” he wrote.

Upon returning to China in the mid-1990s, after a post-graduate period spent away, he noted a widespread difference since the time of his student days. An air of optimism remained, but then he also detected “a distinct whiff of commerce in place of community”. Mr Kitto bemoaned China’s shift from a traditional family culture to a “me” culture, and its rush toward materialism and conspicuous consumption.

Mr Kitto also wrote that he wanted, in a certain sense, to “become Chinese.” He acknowledges that this was never possible—but not that he was naive to think it might be. Eventually he came to find that his “desire to be part of a community and no longer be treated as an outsider” was not attainable. He concludes with hopes that someday the hundreds of thousands of Chinese people whom he knows to be trying to make China a better place will prevail. “That’ll be a good time to become Chinese. It might even be possible,” he wrote.

On that point, I remain sceptical. It is hard to imagine that Mr Kitto’s dream of becoming Chinese, or being accepted as anything close to it, will ever be feasible. I know an American man who moved to China and married a local woman in the 1940s. He took Chinese citizenship in the 1960s, and has lived in the same Beijing courtyard house for 60 years. When visitors come to call, his neighbours helpfully point them to the door of the “old foreigner.”

There are plenty of “old China hands”—myself included—who are content to hang on in spite of the hardships, the challenges, and our inability to become Chinese. Joining us are many younger ones. They are drawn by the sort of excitement and opportunity that can be found in a place that is changing fast and undoubtedly poised to become ever more important to the rest of the world.

Wherever China goes from here, it remains a fascinating thing to watch and to be a part of—even if one must remain contented with “permanent observer” status.