For years, international society has made efforts toward the global governance of migration. On July 13, 2018, the UN’s first inter-governmental agreement on global migration governance “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration” was certified. On Dec. 10 of the same year, 164 UN member states passed the agreement, which signified that global migration governance has entered a phase of substantial development.

However, we should not be too optimistic about the status quo of global migration governance. The complexity of migration affairs means that the path of governance is strewn with thorns. As an important source country of emigrants and destination country for immigrants, China needs to actively think about how to effectively participate in the accelerating global migration governance.

Today, transnational migration activity is increasingly frequent and complex. From the perspective of security, migration affairs have both the nature of traditional security and non-traditional security. On the one hand, migration is linked to war, and military conflicts between countries have caused a large number of people to be forced to migrate. On the other hand, transnational crime, terrorism, environmental degradation, economic crisis and other factors of non-traditional security issues have aggravated illegal migration, environmental migration and other problems.

In reality, the refugee problem and the migration issue usually interweave with each other, which intensifies the complexity of global migration governance. In some cases, we find that in the process of entering the targeted country, some refugees are cracked down on as illegal immigrants because they have not applied for asylum through legal channels, and they are expelled or even imprisoned as illegal immigrants. What comes from this is the dilemma of global migration governance: While cracking down on illegal migrants, the issue of protecting the rights and interests of refugees must be considered. This is a major challenge that global migration governance has to face.

China’s globalization process is also a process in which a great quantity of foreign immigrants come to China. For a long time, foreign immigrants have exerted an important influence on China’s social development. Such influence has deepened and will continue to deepen as China integrates into globalization.

Currently, a large number of foreign immigrants live and work in China. Some immigrants with good qualities have played an important role in China’s economic development and technological progress. At the same time, it is noteworthy that there are some illegal immigrants who gather in the country’s big cities and who are scattered throughout medium- and small-sized cities and even rural areas. The issues of their marriage, children, property disputes and inheritance all challenge the country’s current migration governing system.

Compared to the number of immigrants, there are more Chinese people who migrate overseas. Today, China is one of the world’s major source countries of emigrants. Therefore, the huge influence exerted by overseas Chinese emigrants (who hold Chinese nationality) should not be neglected. An important carrier of China’s national image, the group can be regarded as the extension of the country’s national interest. The impairment of overseas Chinese emigrants’ rights and interests, to some extent, is the impairment of the national overseas interest. Meanwhile, the emigrants are the spokespeople of China’s international image. Their behaviors and demeanors affect the world’s perception and cognition of China. In addition, the group is an important force that Chinese diplomacy can resort to. Today, expatriates are an important means by which many countries conduct diplomatic activities. By taking advantage of expatriates as a rich resource, some countries have improved their international images and established friendly diplomatic ties.

 

Zhou Long is from the School of International Relations at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.

(edited by BAI LE)