Biao Xiang
Director
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Germany
xiang@eth.mpg.de
There is a broad consensus in political and academic circles that the world is moving from an era of globalization to an era of power contestation. “Globalization” indicates a rule-based progression that is driven by economic and technological advancement and is leading humanity toward a common destiny. Power contestation, in contrast, follows no consensus or clear rules, and military might and ideological dogma, rather than the market and technology, shape international relations. The new era is no longer defined by connections and sharing across societies, but by divisions and rivalry.
With the fall of the Berlin Wall, international migration quickly became an integral part of globalization. This migration was “transnational” for, in the late twentieth century, migrants did not simply uproot themselves from home, settle down in the destination country, and cut off old ties. Instead, they kept moving back and forth between home and destination, and increasingly among multiple destinations. They developed transnational spheres of living through globally spanning relations based on family, business, education, and religious and other practices.
So how could transnational connections change in an era of power contestation? I propose that a kind of “subcurrent transnationalism” will increasingly emerge, in which transnational relations will no longer be in the spotlight, but which will contain critical forces for change.
The rapid increase in international migration from China, itself a symbol of post-Cold War globalization, provides a telling example to illustrate this hypothesis. Ordinary Chinese citizens were first allowed to apply for private passports in 1986, while the right to a passport was legally guaranteed in 2007. The state had decoupled outmigration from political concerns, regarding it as a matter of individual choice. And the results were profound. By the 2000s, China had become the world’s largest source of investment immigrants, students and tourists.
As power contestation with the US intensified in the late 2010s, this trend began to reverse. Outmigration became “re-politicized”. In 2017, the Chinese government began to tighten regulations around the outflow of money and people, particularly employees in the public sector. According to data from the Chinese State Migration Bureau, 335,000 passports were issued in the first half of 2021, two percent of the number issued in the same period in 2019. Officially, the government attributed the reduction to COVID, stating that citizens should not risk their wellbeing by going to countries with inferior political systems which were incapable of dealing with the pandemic.
But such restrictions on migration are unlikely to reduce, let alone stop, transnational mobility from China in the long run. Quite the contrary, the desire for outmigration among the educated is continually reaching new heights. This sense of urgency became evident when, in 2018, the Party amended the constitution and lifted the tenure limit on the presidency. During the COVID pandemic, this sense of urgency became even more evident. On WeChat, the social network used by virtually everyone in mainland China, searches for the term “emigration” (yimin) jumped by 440 percent on 3 April 2022, the day the government officially reaffirmed its commitment to the disastrous zero-COVID policy. For many Chinese, the government’s brutal implementation of the policy illustrated its fundamental disregard for human needs and feelings. With regulations tightening, middle-class Chinese have been seeking ways to migrate. Some have moved to Thailand, Cambodia and Ecuador, or other countries with less strict visa controls, using them as a stepping stone to other destinations. Others have resorted to human smuggling networks, something unthinkable for most middle-class families until the recent past.
I assume that transnational mobility and relations resulting from the act of fleeing will become less visible than in the past. Governments locked in power games are unlikely to celebrate transnational connections. The US has tightened controls over scientific and technological collaboration with other countries, especially with China. In response, China has cut back diasporic engagement programmes, and even downgraded the importance of English language courses in schools. Transnational connections may be scaled back from large-scale commercial initiatives and institutional collaboration in the era of globalization to familial and inter-personal relations in an era of power contestation. But there is another, more important reason for transnational relations becoming “subcurrent”— this generation of Chinese migrants are eager to put down strong roots in the destination country rather than moving around as global “astronauts” chasing opportunities. Among the most determined Chinese emigrants are professionals with young children. In normal circumstances, they make unlikely emigrants—they have promising careers, own expensive property, and enjoy extended family relations and a secure environment. But they are deciding to sacrifice material benefits to go abroad, where they believe their children can grow up with agreeable values such as freedom, dignity and mutual respect. This is very different from student migration in the 2010s which was, from the outset, oriented toward returning to China. In other words, if migration during the era of globalization was primarily driven by migrants’ pursuit of economic value, migration after globalization is being driven more by normative values, by migrant perceptions of what is good, important, and worthy.
Although transnational connections may be down-scaled, that does not mean migrants will become less transnationally committed. For instance, though forbidden from returning home, exiles are often deeply committed to their home societies. Due to political repression, a number of activists, artists, journalists, scholars and other highly committed citizens have felt compelled to leave China since the late 2010s. Indeed, as one activist told me, the heart of China’s feminist movement is no longer in the country, as most leaders have already migrated to North America and Europe. There they make use of these new freedoms to develop global networks and organize public discussions through podcasts, online meetings, and art projects, all of which primarily target an audience in China.
Subcurrent transnationalism is not unique to China and its diaspora. Many educated middle-class potential emigrants in India, Turkey and Russia – to name but a few prominent examples –face similar repression. They may be desperate to leave, but they are also profoundly committed to their home societies. We have seen this happen, although in different forms and to different degrees, with the US and the UK too. An exile sentiment is widespread among those who disagree with the Trump and Brexit agendas, and some have moved abroad as a way of keeping their cherished values alive. Further, anecdotal evidence suggests that young people from different countries who share an exile mentality are establishing contact with one another, spreading subcurrent transnationalism far beyond a simple two-way relationship between home and destination into a broader network of like-minded people. As the world slides into an era of dull, dangerous and damaging state-centric power, let us hope that such subcurrent transnationalism can make the 21st century world more liveable.