Since the start of the latest global financial crisis, Beijing has been having a ball gloating at the plight of the West. But if the American dream has truly been strangled by a noose of debt – as the Chinese government seems to think – then why is emigration still so attractive to so many Chinese?
According to the Blue Book of Overseas Chinese published on Monday in Beijing, since 1978 total emigration from China has exceeded 4.5m.
What’s more, the report (which is issued by the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, China’s cabinet) says Chinese who have left the motherland are on top of the world overseas: one third of the founders or senior executives in Silicon Valley, the US high technology mecca, are of Chinese origin.