Moving along the belt and road: Implications of China’s “one belt, one road” strategies on Chinese migration

Abstract

Along with the flows of China’s foreign direct investment following the newly implemented “One Belt, One Road” strategy by the Chinese government comes movement of state employees, entrepreneurs, workers and accompanying family members to respective countries along the Belt and Road. It is not clear how large the Chinese migration flows into these countries will be, who they will be comprised of, how the public reception of the host society will be and how well the migrants will be integrated in the destination country. Based on extant data and literature on current Chinese migration, this paper describes trends and patterns of recent Chinese migration in Africa and Asia, analyzes host country public perceptions on China, and investigates integration patterns of Chinese migrants. Given that the “One Belt, One Road” strategy was officially endorsed in 2015, it is still early to analyze its impacts on Chinese migration in the respective countries. Considering earlier Chinese overseas migration of the past decades, this paper presents potential migration and integration patterns one may expect following the Belt and Road initiative.