Chinese Immigrants Chase the Japanese Dream

Time ^ | 12/06/2007 | HANNAH BEECH

[steelboy]

. And so the deluge of highly educated Chinese is challenging Japan to re-evaluate its attitude toward foreigners — particularly those who hail from what was once dismissed as a communist backwater but today is crucial to Japan's economic prospects. In 2004, trade between the two countries reached $205 billion, with China for the first time overtaking the U.S. as Japan's largest trading partner. With their bilingual skills and transnational degrees, Japan's new class of Chinese immigrants is poised to profit from this new East Asian reality.

[Zhang Fei]

While Le is here, however, she's on a mission to change her homeland's negative reputation. "Japanese have an image of China as still poor," she says, shaking her head. "But that's just not true anymore."

It's amazing how Chinese can remain delusional in the face of reality.

During one stint when Wu toiled as a janitor, his Japanese boss took the Chinese workers aside and admonished them against stealing from the offices they were cleaning, a warning never uttered to the Japanese staff.

That's because theft is a Chinese national pastime. And it's not confined to janitorial staff. Chinese workers have a reputation for being light-fingered.

[Zhang Fei]

He's now rich and dines with Japanese Prime Ministers. But Song recounts how he was recently stopped on the subway by police who suspected he was an illegal immigrant. "It's not just the Japanese government," Song says. "It's in the air, this anti-foreigner feeling. Even if Japan loosens immigration, it'll be because of economic necessity, not because of a real change of attitude."

This is part of immigration enforcement. If you can't check someone's papers, you might as well have open borders. Oddly enough, Chinese cops can stop anyone they want, any time they want to.

[Casaubon]

they have to do what they have to do to get by in china.

the rations dont cut it and the black market is king.

same thing was true in Russia during the cold war.
currently in Cuba too.

the sad truth of communism.

[Zhang Fei]

they have to do what they have to do to get by in china. the rations dont cut it and the black market is king.

They don't have rationing as an excuse any more. Getting paid in ration coupons went away decades ago. Since China's economic liberalization started in the late '70's, workers have been paid in yuan (i.e. paper money). The barter economy that was ushered in by ration coupons is extinct. Just about the only shortages you get in China relate to gasoline and electricity, both of which are heavily subsidized. Just about everything else is more or less freely traded. Domestically, anyway, since foreign goods are heavily taxed.