The Romanian Press Agency article has an eye-catching article, "Romania leads top emigration countries in EU".
The largest groups came from Romania with 1.7million emigrants, namely 15% of total number of foreign citizens from another EU Member State. Romania is followed by Italy with 1.3 million emigrants or 11%, and Poland with 1.2 million citizens or 11%. Among the citizens of countries outside the European Union, the largest groups were from Turkey (2.4 million), Morocco (1.7 million), and Albania (1 million). According to Eurostat, the highest percentage of Romanian citizens in the population was found in Spain (734,800), Italy (625,300) and Hungary (65,000).
This is the Eurostat press release that the article refers to. Some of the patterns revealed are quite interesting, for instance the distribution of the foreign-born--while biased towards the large EU countries in absolute numbers--follows certain traces.
In 2008, the largest numbers of foreign citizens were recorded in Germany (7.3 million persons), Spain (5.3 million), the United Kingdom (4.0 million), France (3.7 million) and Italy (3.4 million). More than 75% of the foreign citizens in the EU27 lived in these Member States.
Among the EU27 Member States, the highest percentage of foreign citizens in the population was found in Luxembourg (43% of the total population), followed by Latvia (18%), Estonia (17%), Cyprus (16%), Ireland (13%), Spain (12%) and Austria (10%). The percentage of foreign citizens was less than 1% in Romania, Poland, Bulgaria and Slovakia.
In a detailed breakdown of the top three foreign nationalities in all but three European Union member-states, the report shows the consequences of historic migrations, like the Soviet-era flows to Latvia and Lithuania, the historically massive Italian flows to France and Belgium and the Portuguese movements to France and Switzerland and Luxembourg, the domination of migration to Portugal by Lusophones and migration to Finland from its neighbouring countries, down to the most recent movements like that of Ukrainians to the Czech Republic and Albanians to Greece and, of course, the Romanians to Spain and Portugal.
Some of the statistics are likely off, mind, not indicating the size of the migrations owing to the naturalization of the immigrants and the assimilation of their second- and third-generation descendants, and the extent to which this is even possible. In a Romania with relatively few foreign citizens present, "the largest group of foreign citizens came from Moldova (5,500), Turkey (2,200) and China (1,900)," but exceptionally liberal citizenship policy for Moldovans based on Romanian policy that Moldovans are Romanians, too, with upwards of a million applicants.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
On how migrants from Sichuan will help complicate China's economic growth
The first I heard about the large-scale migration from the Chinese interior province of Sichuan to richer areas on the Chinese coast came with last year's earthquake, when Reuters covered? Sichuanese migrant workers in Beijing concerned about their homes.
Ye Shao did not feel a thing when China's most ruinous earthquake in decades struck in her home province of Sichuan on Monday, sending shockwaves that panicked residents from Shanghai to Bangkok.
"I was delivering vegetables at the time, but I thought it strange that all these people were running out of buildings on to the street," Ye said.
Four agonising hours later, Ye thanked heaven her parents, who live about 100 km from the epicentre at Sichuan's Wenchuan county, were outdoors when the quake hit.
"They are now living in tents in an open field. Our family home is ruined. Of course, I'm worried for them, because I've heard there may be more aftershocks," said Ye.
As state media reported on Thursday that the death toll from the 7.9 magnitude quake could rise to more than 50,000, Sichuan migrant workers in Beijing talked gloomily of broken homes, dead neighbours and fears for relatives living in desperation.
Forming a large part of China's 150 million surplus rural workers, whose cheap labour has fuelled blistering economic growth, millions of Sichuanese have migrated more than 1,000 miles to work in booming cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Many have left spouses and children in poor villages at home in a bid to better their prospects.
UNESCAP noted in its summary of Sichuan's demography that, despite economic improvements, the province was still fairly poor, with a high population density in usable lands and relatively low standards of education even as China's reforms have made peasant life more difficult, especially but notn only for women, and with Sichuan's mountainous areas suffering especially high levels of poverty (though these latter tend to migrate within Sichuan). Notwithstanding an exceptionally rapid demographic transition over the 1980s despite some problematic statistics, Sichuan like other provinces of the Chinese interior had a large labour surplus.
Where do these people go? They head to the richer parts of China where they have a huge impact on the country as a whole, on areas in Sichuan receiving remittances as on the migrant-receiving areas themselves, where Sichuanese and other migrants formed the majority of the labour force in some sectors of the southeast Chinese economy. Irena Omelaniuk observed in 2004 that provinces like Sichuan which produce the bulk of China's internal migrants produce relatively few international migrants, Sichuanese migrants instead moving to provinces like Fujian and Zhejiang which are themselves disproportionately important sources of China's international migrants, as caught in passing in this Slate article. In a very real sense, Sichuanese and other migrants fill the employment and other gaps left by international migrants and then some.
What consequences will this have? It may be worth noting that China's regional languages are probably going to be doomed. These migrations of Putonghua-speakers, combined with state education and services in that languages, is marginalizing regional langauges like Shanghainese and Cantonese, in overseas Chinese communities and certainly in China itself: by the time that people concerned for Cantonese's future are complaining about this in Putonghua, you know that the language's future is grim. If, as I blogged back in July, the cohort fertility of Shanghai's native population is dramatically below replacement and migration is the only thing that will ensure the city's population growth, the odds that Shanghai will switch over to the national language are that much higher.
Just as importantly, thse migrants from Sichuan (and other poorer areas within China will help keep the Chinese economic model going for a bit longer. Edward observed back in 2007 that rural China was quickly heading down the route of sub-replacement fertility, while Claus noted back in 2008 that rising expectations and shrinking migrant flows were creating labour shortages in some industries. China may, as the recent Economist article suggests, be able to continue shifting labour from its poor rural areas to the cities, a relatively more educated and urbanized workforce shifting to value-added products as this IIASA projection suggests.
First of all, China is expected to become a “world factory” with rapid growth of manufacturing enterprises in global production network, due to its cheaper labor cost, easier access to regional markets and increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) after China’s accession to WTO (C. Gu, 1999; D. Webster, 2002). The manufacturing enterprises usually are labor-intensive and require large amount of workers with a relative low education level and skills which new rural-urban migrants can fit in. Secondly, the tertiary industry in cities and towns has great development potentials. Currently, the tertiary industry in Chinese cities and towns is rather backward and less developed. With increasing income and living standards, the demand on services will rise strongly. Thirdly, urbanization as a process creates economic growth. It has been observed everywhere that per capita income is higher in cities that in rural areas. The reason is simply that productivity is higher in cities. This is true not only of labor productivity, but also of capital productivity, and even for infrastructure productivity. By moving labor and capital from lower to higher productivity areas, it automatically increases average productivity (P. H. Remy, 2000) (56-57).
As Scott notes it may as easily throttle China's prospects, forcing it to depend still more heavily on exports to support its rapidly aging population as it fails to increase its productivity as quickly as one might want and its aging population becoming net consumers instead of net savers.
The situation will be severe in the rich provinces of the south and east. What, I wonder, will things be like in the poor centre, west, and north of China, places which haven't prospered nearly as much as the favoured coastal regions and which are net senders of migrants in the bargain? In a decade's time, observers may be talking about the hollowing-out of Sichuan and its neighbours, with obvious consequences on China's internal divisions and stability.
Ye Shao did not feel a thing when China's most ruinous earthquake in decades struck in her home province of Sichuan on Monday, sending shockwaves that panicked residents from Shanghai to Bangkok.
"I was delivering vegetables at the time, but I thought it strange that all these people were running out of buildings on to the street," Ye said.
Four agonising hours later, Ye thanked heaven her parents, who live about 100 km from the epicentre at Sichuan's Wenchuan county, were outdoors when the quake hit.
"They are now living in tents in an open field. Our family home is ruined. Of course, I'm worried for them, because I've heard there may be more aftershocks," said Ye.
As state media reported on Thursday that the death toll from the 7.9 magnitude quake could rise to more than 50,000, Sichuan migrant workers in Beijing talked gloomily of broken homes, dead neighbours and fears for relatives living in desperation.
Forming a large part of China's 150 million surplus rural workers, whose cheap labour has fuelled blistering economic growth, millions of Sichuanese have migrated more than 1,000 miles to work in booming cities like Beijing and Shanghai.
Many have left spouses and children in poor villages at home in a bid to better their prospects.
UNESCAP noted in its summary of Sichuan's demography that, despite economic improvements, the province was still fairly poor, with a high population density in usable lands and relatively low standards of education even as China's reforms have made peasant life more difficult, especially but notn only for women, and with Sichuan's mountainous areas suffering especially high levels of poverty (though these latter tend to migrate within Sichuan). Notwithstanding an exceptionally rapid demographic transition over the 1980s despite some problematic statistics, Sichuan like other provinces of the Chinese interior had a large labour surplus.
Where do these people go? They head to the richer parts of China where they have a huge impact on the country as a whole, on areas in Sichuan receiving remittances as on the migrant-receiving areas themselves, where Sichuanese and other migrants formed the majority of the labour force in some sectors of the southeast Chinese economy. Irena Omelaniuk observed in 2004 that provinces like Sichuan which produce the bulk of China's internal migrants produce relatively few international migrants, Sichuanese migrants instead moving to provinces like Fujian and Zhejiang which are themselves disproportionately important sources of China's international migrants, as caught in passing in this Slate article. In a very real sense, Sichuanese and other migrants fill the employment and other gaps left by international migrants and then some.
What consequences will this have? It may be worth noting that China's regional languages are probably going to be doomed. These migrations of Putonghua-speakers, combined with state education and services in that languages, is marginalizing regional langauges like Shanghainese and Cantonese, in overseas Chinese communities and certainly in China itself: by the time that people concerned for Cantonese's future are complaining about this in Putonghua, you know that the language's future is grim. If, as I blogged back in July, the cohort fertility of Shanghai's native population is dramatically below replacement and migration is the only thing that will ensure the city's population growth, the odds that Shanghai will switch over to the national language are that much higher.
Just as importantly, thse migrants from Sichuan (and other poorer areas within China will help keep the Chinese economic model going for a bit longer. Edward observed back in 2007 that rural China was quickly heading down the route of sub-replacement fertility, while Claus noted back in 2008 that rising expectations and shrinking migrant flows were creating labour shortages in some industries. China may, as the recent Economist article suggests, be able to continue shifting labour from its poor rural areas to the cities, a relatively more educated and urbanized workforce shifting to value-added products as this IIASA projection suggests.
First of all, China is expected to become a “world factory” with rapid growth of manufacturing enterprises in global production network, due to its cheaper labor cost, easier access to regional markets and increasing foreign direct investment (FDI) after China’s accession to WTO (C. Gu, 1999; D. Webster, 2002). The manufacturing enterprises usually are labor-intensive and require large amount of workers with a relative low education level and skills which new rural-urban migrants can fit in. Secondly, the tertiary industry in cities and towns has great development potentials. Currently, the tertiary industry in Chinese cities and towns is rather backward and less developed. With increasing income and living standards, the demand on services will rise strongly. Thirdly, urbanization as a process creates economic growth. It has been observed everywhere that per capita income is higher in cities that in rural areas. The reason is simply that productivity is higher in cities. This is true not only of labor productivity, but also of capital productivity, and even for infrastructure productivity. By moving labor and capital from lower to higher productivity areas, it automatically increases average productivity (P. H. Remy, 2000) (56-57).
As Scott notes it may as easily throttle China's prospects, forcing it to depend still more heavily on exports to support its rapidly aging population as it fails to increase its productivity as quickly as one might want and its aging population becoming net consumers instead of net savers.
The situation will be severe in the rich provinces of the south and east. What, I wonder, will things be like in the poor centre, west, and north of China, places which haven't prospered nearly as much as the favoured coastal regions and which are net senders of migrants in the bargain? In a decade's time, observers may be talking about the hollowing-out of Sichuan and its neighbours, with obvious consequences on China's internal divisions and stability.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
A US outlook on China's demographic prospects
I will chime in following suit to Edward's discussion of China's prospects with some details from the US Census Bureau's analysis of China’s demographic future. Some excerpts are:
China’s population is projected to peak at slightly less than 1.4 billion in 2026, both earlier and at a lower level than previously projected…The latest projections indicate that by 2026, the population of China will begin to decline. Population growth in China, the world’s most populous country, is slowing and currently stands at 0.5 percent annually. China surpassed the 1.2 billion population mark in 1994 and reached 1.3 billion in 2006…The slowdown in China’s population growth is the result of declining fertility. China’s total fertility rate is estimated to have been 2.2 in 1990, 1.8 in 1995 and less than 1.6 since 2000. China’s fertility rate is currently half a birth below that of the United States, which is more than two births per woman.
Key evidence for the new fertility estimates comes from analysis of data from China’s recent census and surveys. One of the consequences to China’s declining fertility rate is that the number of new entrants to China’s labor force may be near its peak. The population ages 20-24 is projected to peak at 124 million in 2010…Despite a shrinking younger population, China’s labor force may continue to grow for several years since the population ages 20 to 59 (prime working ages) is not expected to peak until 2016 at 831 million, an increase of 24 million from the current estimated level.”
I highlighted several particularly notable statements. The concept that China’s labor force may peak in only six years at a level only 24 million persons greater than current should lead to careful reconsideration of several themes that have been conventional wisdom regarding China. These are the idea of the (practically) limitless labor pool, the idea that economic growth in China can continue to rapidly increase, and the idea that opportunities for market growth in China and outsourcing opportunities to China will increase for the foreseeable future.
If the size of China’s labor force is in fact near its peak then by definition domestic consumption will have to increase some time as those that leave the workforce due to age will be net consumers rather than savers. This could make China even more export-dependent, which is hard to imagine. Michael Pettis makes a solid case that domestic consumption in China has been shrinking in recent years as a share of GDP due to government economic policy.
A shrinking labor force will also make it difficult for China to maintain GDP growth rates. Michael Pettis in another analysis makes an interesting case that China may not be able to increase the productivity of its workforce as rapidly as many think. Since the textbook response to the problem of maintaining growth with a smaller workforce is to increase productivity, this could be a difficult problem. The burden of supporting the rapidly increasing population of non workers will last until the Chinese population as a whole starts to decline.
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