Refugee Flow or Brain-Drain? The Humanitarian Policy and Post-Tiananmen Mainland Chinese Immigration to Canada

Abstract

The humanitarian policy that the Canadian government implemented in response to the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown changed a migration system primarily based on personal networks into a brain drain. Post‐Tiananmen mainland Chinese immigrants (MCIs) were better educated than those arriving in Canada previously. Among the post‐Tiananmen MCIs, those who landed under the policy were better educated than those landing in other categories. The analysis suggests that post‐Tiananmen MCIs represented a brain‐drain rather than a refugee flow, that the humanitarian policy implicitly contained ideological and human capital concerns in addition to humanitarian concerns, and that Canada benefited from the policy by obtaining human capital as well as satisfying its humanitarian obligations and ideological aspirations. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The China Challenge : Sino-Canadian Relations in the 21st Century

“…Direct migration from mainland China remained restricted because of the "closed door" imposed by Mao Zedong's regime since 1949, so most Chinese migrating to Canada came from Hong Kong, Taiwan and diaspora communities in Southeast Asia, Southern Africa, Latin America (especially Peru) and the West Indies. It was only starting in 1974, under the family reunifi cation programme initiated during Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's visit to China in 1973, that immigration from mainland China became a signifi cant factor (see Liu 1997). Between 1974 and 1988 most of the mainland Chinese who migrated to Canada did so with the help of their already established families or through social networks.…”

“…Additionally, as a result of Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms and "open door" policy, introduced from December 1978, around 50,000 mainland Chinese students studied in Western democratic countries between 1978 and 1987, 40,000 of whom were funded by the Chinese government, the other 10,000 being self-supporting (see Gittings 1989). Starting in the 1990s, the level of education of immigrants from mainland China to Canada was higher than that of other immigrants settling in the country (see Liu 1997). It is worth noting that, as a result of a change in Ottawa's immigration policy following the Tiananmen incident in 1989, many mainland Chinese immigrants during this period were admitted as independent immigrants.…”

A political economy approach to understanding the economic incorporation of Chinese sub-ethnic groups

“…At the same time, China, in its effort to modernize, had allowed many highly educated professionals and scholars to pursue further studies and training in Canada. The Tiananmen Square incident in 1989, the tragic outcome of a student pro-democracy protest in China, and the subsequent Canadian response in a measure known as OM IS 399, a humanitarian program for Chinese nationals, enabled a surge of immigrants from China (Liu, 1997). Many of these new China-born immigrants were rich in human capital but poor in economic resources.…”

Social Capital and Income Attainment among Chinese Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Toronto

“…Immigrants from Taiwan are more entrepreneurial and business immigrants compose a significant proportion among them (Smart, 1994). Recent immigrants from China originally came to Canada to obtain advanced university degrees, and later decided to stay (Liu and Norcliffe, 1996;Liu, 1997).…”