Diaspora-management policies of modern ‘city-states’: strategies and practices of engaging Overseas Chinese by Shanghai Municipal Government

ABSTRACT

The number of states that have developed layered engagement policies aimed at co-opting various migrant or diaspora groups has exponentially risen in the past couple of years. The highest political leadership of China has also recognized the need to tackle this matter systematically within its national political and institutional setup. The primary objective of this research note is to explore the Chinese government's framing and capacity to shape cooperation mechanisms with Chinese migrant and diaspora communities abroad, through analyzing the work of the Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs of the Shanghai Municipal Government. My primary aim is to trace and reconstruct locally designed mechanisms employed by government agents to capture certain migrant groups into their own structures of local programmes. I outline what the practical implications of such localized management practices in China are, specifically focusing on agency, institutions and processes, and assessing the impact of the resulting complexities in the current institutional set-up of the Shanghai Municipality.

KEYWORDS:

• Diaspora
• migrants
• local government
• Shanghai
• China

Introductory remarks

Relationships between various nation-states and their migrant groups have evolved over time, under different circumstances, and with different end-goals. Some of these ‘state-led transnational’ policies and programmes have been institutionalized, in an attempt to expand the scope of state's political, economic, and social regulations to include emigrants and their descendants (Goldring 2002, 64). Comparative research on state-migrant-diaspora relations have expanded in the past decade (cf. De Haas 2006; Margheritis 2015; Hasić 2016, 2018; Gamlen, Cummings, and Vaaler 2017; Glasius 2018; Koinova and Tsourapas 2018; Mencutek and Baser 2018; Delano Alonso and Mylonas 2019; Karabegović and Hasić 2019; Karabegović 2019), all clearly indicating that many governments have been able to harness and utilize migrant and diaspora potentials for their own end. Some states have been able to develop their own extensive policies and institutions to foster these relations, and in other cases with the help from regional and international organizations where state capacity was weaker (cf. Delano and Gamlen 2014; Ragazzi 2014).

Many world governments have progressively begun to use their migrant and diaspora communities in deliberate ways for economic and other gains. Numerous engagement strategies and policies have emerged in diverse forms, from highly formalized to light and informal procedures principally founded on complex cost–benefit calculations or specific governance models (Ancien, Boyle, and Kitchin 2009; Boyle, Kitchin, and Ancien 2009). Examples of those state policies include the creation of institutions¹ to address the needs and demands of migrants; efforts to monitor and channel the transfer of remittances; and incentives for investments and cultural exchanges with the home country. Most of these policies largely follow a top-down approach (Margheritis 2015). Some of the approaches taken have also been extensively criticized (cf. Sheffer 2010; Brinkerhoff 2012; Gamlen 2013; Pellerin and Mullings 2013).

In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping, along with the complete Politbureau's Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) opened the Ninth National Congress of the ‘All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese’,² with 3200 delegates in attendance (Thuno 2018). This marked the Chinese government's inclination to more assertively embrace Chinese migrants and diaspora groups not only as drivers of domestic development, but also as a constituent part of its ‘public diplomacy’ scheme. Considering the size of the Chinese overseas community, which according to some estimates amounts up to 60 million people, this policy shift was expected and in line with the continuous promotion of Chinese soft power internationally. Most of the available literature on migration management from China concentrated on receiving countries, while some of the researchers who analyzed the structure and capacity of Chinese government institutions to initiate and implement policies toward overseas Chinese approached this matter from a state-centred standpoint (Biao 2003; Tisdell 2009; To 2012; Bekkers 2017).

In this note, I focus on local migration governance, and I scrutinize subnational – city-level policies of the Municipal Government of Shanghai. Local capacity of institutions cannot be fully isolated from the state-level government, but it also cannot be taken for granted since Shanghai is a mega-city of 28 million people, with a highly developed institutional network that determines conditions for embedding migrants’ into the economy. I examine the status of engagement of Shanghai city government with Chinese migrant & diaspora communities around the world, and explore in what way they extend, cultivate and deepen relations with the migrants and how partial policy devolution from national level can contribute to more effective strategy design and overall results. I analyze the City's specific publically available policy schemata, internal organizational framework, capacity, and potential contributions toward migrant-diaspora engagement in shaping and influencing the dynamics of development.

I examine how the Shanghai City government seeks to find way to effectively manage the relations with Chinese migrant and diaspora groups abroad. I observed that Shanghai migrant policies are primarily directed towards attracting and harnessing the potentials of resourceful migrants in a market-driven competitive setting. Thus, the officials are engaged in designing tailored return and repatriation measures to accommodate targeted individual's needs. I suggest that a sub-national approach in examining this matter helps to understand the overall nature of engagement of Chinese state with its migrant and diaspora communities, because it focuses on cost-effective material gains and strips the notion of cultural and identity driven involvement playing a significant role in the management process. The key contributions of this research note rest in its advancement of the growing scholarly debate on state-migrant-diaspora relations and their management, but with a specific focus on subnational government institutions, which have received less attention.

Approach and methods

This a disciplined case study, analyzed with a case-oriented approach (George and Bennett 2005). This is an empirically-driven research interest tested through interpretative and institutional analysis of a single sub-national case study, suited for analysis due to more accurate and disaggregated data available, as well as the control of spatially uneven processes of political and societal transformations being analyzed (Tausanovitch and Warshaw 2014).

The analysis is based on the review of available primary sources, including national and city-level legislative and policy papers issued by the Chinese central government institutions and Shanghai's municipal government. This is complemented with six semi-structured interviews with local and international China and Chinese diaspora scholars and policy experts, as well as direct beneficiaries of Shanghai's migrant policies, conducted in Shanghai (September 2018) and subsequently via online communication tools (October and November 2018). The first three interviews were conducted with Shanghai municipal government officials, working at OOCA and department for economic relations. The other three interviews involved repatriated Chinese migrants, who either responded to OOCA's outreach or who directly benefited from the policies offered by the OOCA, and a university professor, a local expert on migration working at one of Shanghai's universities.³

The interpretation of data is supplemented by in-depth reading of secondary sources that focus on relations between China and overseas Chinese. I utilize process tracing to carve out the details of the empirical case analyzed (George and Bennett 2005), and qualitative content analysis of the official websites. My main goal is to understand the relations and the outcome by building minimally sufficient explanation within a case study, without trying to root or explain the causal mechanisms (cf. Beach and Pedersen 2019). My main epistemic premise follows the logic of appropriateness and arguing, while the conceptual framework utilizes interpretative and institutional analyses.

After reviewing key general notions and past research on state-diaspora engagement policies in China, and situating my own research aims, I shift towards examining in more detail the case study of Shanghai's municipal migrant policy scheme. I conclude with a set of observations of the practical implications of the policies for understanding the overall state-migrant-diaspora relationship dynamics.

China's Overseas Chinese policy: weathering system-level changes

The composition of the Chinese diaspora population is ‘superdiverse’, consisting of groups with vastly different migration backgrounds, motivations and experiences, different educational and socioeconomic backgrounds and statuses, different occupations, and finally, different languages (Vertovec 2010). With more than 40 million people of diverse backgrounds distributed all over the world, the Chinese diaspora challenges any efforts of generalization and essentialization (Song 2019). There are several regional and cultural affiliations being used to distinguish themselves, such as Hong Kong Chinese, Shanghai Chinese, Beijing Chinese (Tan 2013, 301). Even though the Chinese diaspora developed a multiplicity of national, political, and class identities, past studies on Chinese economic activities around the world indicate a shared tendency to concentrate in business activities with certain common features in business culture and mode of operation (Lever-Tracy, Ip, and Tracy 1996). Chinese migration, currently, can be described both as a continuation and a radical break from its recent past. Emigration, immigration and remigration cannot be treated as separate movements, but they are indicative of the globally of Chinese identities and societies (Ho 2018).

Chinese transnationalism can be conceptualized in three prongs: as the movement of people, capital, ideas, media images, and communications and transport technologies across national borders; as connectedness, flows, linkages, and networks marked by inequality and unevenness; and as a gradual and progressive distancing from one's ancestral culture (Sun and Sinclair 2015). The Chinese government's institutional responses correspond to these involvement dimensions.

Chinese outreach policies toward its migrant-diaspora communities abroad dates back to the 1970s. Back then, it was believed that developing transnational social capital could inform policy-making and boost China's modernization and economy, and knowledge exchange and education were regarded as the engine of a strong economic growth. This is when Deng's administration proposed and implemented the Open Door Policy in 1978 (Tisdell 2009, 275). Following the Cultural Revolution, China had to tackle massive economic challenges. The country's administrative and economic reconstruction was sorely needed, however, the local capacities were insufficient. The country lacked young and mid-career engineers and other professionals who could drive the reforms in all spheres, mainly in technology, industry, and agriculture (Hughes 2006). Migration policies need to adapt to the market needs, and thus China's first ‘major’ returnee policies were introduced in the 1990s. One of the first programmes of this kind was the One Hundred Talent Program implemented by the Chinese Academy of Science (in 1994), with the main goal of recruiting Chinese scientists working abroad⁴ (Bekkers 2017, 1). Skilled migrant communities residing aboard were effectively allowed to get involved and develop cross-border relations with their family and community members, and thus help the country through direct return, sending remittances and other forms of (in)formal participation in local economy, as well as through lobbying and advocacy.⁵

In the early 2000s, the Chinese authorities did not have a single blanket policy covering all categories of emigrants, but the national diaspora-oriented strategies were present on the policy agenda. The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office launched the ‘Developing Motherland and Benefiting-Assisting Overseas Chinese’ plan in 2002, initially for three years, aimed to promote the interaction between traditional overseas Chinese, and ‘new migrants’ on a global scale (Biao 2003). Generally, from 1979 to 2000, the Chinese People's Congress adopted more than 360 and State Council more than 800 relevant laws and regulations related to Chinese overseas migration management policy (Barabantseva 2005, 10).

The formulation, implementation and monitoring of the current Chinese overseas policy are distributed between several interconnected government bodies and institutions within a ‘five diaspora system’, coordinated by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Chinese embassies around the world, and co-implemented by the Overseas Office Chinese Affairs (OOCA), which was established an administrative body under the State Council, All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese (ACFROC), the Overseas Chinese Affairs Committee, the Zhigong Party, and the Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan Compatriots (Liu and van Dongen 2016, 809). Some socio-economic aspects of the Chinese government's policy on migration and diaspora related issues are further devolved to the regions and cities.

Some analysts argue that the Chinese government has not fully succeeded in gaining broad-based and unqualified acceptance by their diaspora communities, since simple alignment with predefined expectations cannot be taken for granted in the implementation of diaspora policies (Schaefer 2019). Correspondingly, analyzing Chinese migrant and diaspora policies solely from a state-level perspective does not entirely help in understanding spatially uneven processes taking place at regional and city levels that take part in managing migrant and diaspora affairs.

Managing state-migrant relations ‘locally’

All Chinese politics is principally local (cf. Zhou and Harding 2007), bureaucratized through policy deviation instead of flexibility (Zhou 2009), which gives sub-provincial levels considerable expenditure responsibilities, especially at the county and municipal levels (Dong, Cui, and Christensen 2015). The existing top–bottom political control maintains the hierarchy system in the provision of local public services and ensures the overall framework is designed by the central government. However, local governments have received greater powers and autonomy over investment approval, entry and exit regulation, and resource allocation (Lin, Tao, and Liu 2005), and they often develop coping strategies that sidetrack state policies in the implementation process, mainly to fit their local conditions and specific interests (Zhou 2009).

The governmental and administrative structure in China comprises four administrative tiers (Chung 2010). The organizational hierarchy of the CPC follows the same four-tier administrative structure, with party organs integrated at each level of the state's organization. The provincial level comprises twenty-two provinces,⁶ five autonomous regions, and four directly administered city-municipalities: Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing. Directly administered municipalities have a certain degree of policy authority, mainly in administrative reforms (medium), economic development (medium to high)⁷ and culture and education (medium) (Schmidt and Heilmann 2017). According to the Chinese National Master Plan for Urban System (2005–2020) Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong are defined as cities with ‘global functions’. While political and administrative statuses between the cities might differ, economic power hubs like Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are unofficially known as ‘first-tier cities’ (Chan and Wan 2017).⁸

The Chinese government is determined to make Shanghai a dominant international financial hub in East-Asia-Pacific region, one of its long-term objectives (Huotari, Schmidt, and Heilmann 2017, 218–224), and this is why aside from Beijing, Shanghai has become the most selective city for immigration. Local government policies favour the young, talented, skilled, qualified, and wealthy Chinese. For example, the Pudong New Area in Shanghai, established in the 1990s with strong backing from the central government, was granted extensive special administrative rights, and now plays a key role in the Chinese banking sector and stock market (Schmidt and Heilmann 2017, 87). As a result, thousands of local and foreign skilled mediators and lobbyists work for foreign businesses in Shanghai, as ‘communications specialists’ or ‘investment consultants’ (Heilmann 2017, 189).

Shanghai's rebranding as a ‘global hub’ also required a major social reconstruction. On the one hand, rapid economic transformations led to an expansion of the wealth among a small group of people, such as investors and professional and technical staff. On the other hand, unskilled labourers lost their jobs or were forced to find other employment elsewhere. This is why migrant workers represent a major component in the labour force pool. Since the 2000s, the number of migrant workers seeking jobs in Shanghai has increased by 300.000 each year, adding up to 4 million migrant workers in the city (Gu et al. 2011).

In order to help navigate this, and to effectively manage migration system locally, the municipal Government of Shanghai has established an Office for Overseas Chinese Affairs.⁹ It was established as an institution directly under the municipal government, with its main functions, internal structure and personnel management.¹⁰ The main functions and tasks of the Office are clearly outlined in the CPC's Plan on Reforms of Organs of Shanghai Municipal Government, and they can be grouped into 4 main categories (Table 1).

Table 1. Classification of legal competencies of the Office for Overseas Chinese Affairs in Shanghai.

Legal and Normative Tasks: Relevant and up-to-date research and drafting of the local rules, regulations and policies; formulation of the development plan and annual plan for the overseas Chinese affairs; formulation of relevant policies related to in-bound and out-bound travelling; legal protection the legitimate rights and interests of returned overseas Chinese and the family members of overseas Chinese, and also those of overseas Chinese, Chinese people, and compatriots from Hong Kong and Macau.

Organizational Management and Coordination: reporting to the departments involving the work of overseas Chinese affairs; cooperation with relevant departments in managing the returned overseas Chinese and the family members of overseas Chinese affected by poverty; cooperation with relevant departments in overseas incidents; coordinating visits, guiding and carrying out the union and service for overseas Chinese, Chinese people and their communities; carrying out the union work for Chinese from Hong Kong and Macau special administrative regions and cooperate with relevant departments in carrying out the work towards Chinese from Taiwan; coordinating the work of economic complaints involving overseas Chinese cooperation with the public security department in reviewing and approving the issues of overseas Chinese returning to reside in Shanghai; coordination of key reception work related to overseas Chinese affairs; review and approval of important and famous overseas Chinese who are supposed to meet the municipal leaders; coordination with embassies and relevant institutions to carry out the friendly unification of overseas Chinese, Chinese people, and compatriots from Hong Kong and Macau and communities of overseas Chinese; coordination with relevant departments and social groups to carry out the work an unified manner; guiding the relevant departments and units in the counties, districts, universities and communities to carry out the work of overseas Chinese affairs.

Administration and Execution of Policies: implementing the laws, regulations, rules, guidelines and policies related to the work of overseas Chinese affairs; supervision and inspection of relevant regulations, rules and policies to assist the leaders of the municipal government in managing their work; providing services for the people within the society of overseas Chinese and their family members who are residing, living and working in Shanghai; to identifying the returned overseas Chinese, the family members of overseas Chinese, overseas Chinese and Chinese people in accordance with relevant stipulations; organizing training for the overseas Chinese affairs of the municipality units on relevant policies, regulations and profession; guiding the work of relevant social groups in the circle of overseas Chinese; relevant administrative reviews and responses to administrative proceedings; carrying out other tasks assigned by the municipal party committee and the municipal government.

Outreach and Other Initiatives: survey and research on the policies, theories and key issues of the work of overseas Chinese affairs; following and studying domestic and overseas situations of the overseas Chinese people, and providing relevant information to the related departments; researching and reaching out to talents from overseas Chinese, Chinese people, and compatriots in Hong Kong and Macau; promoting the economic and technical cooperation and exchange related to overseas Chinese affairs; cooperation with other departments on investments from overseas Chinese and the overseas Chinese who come to develop their career in Shanghai; overseeing donation work of the overseas Chinese, Chinese people, and compatriots from Hong Kong and Macau in Shanghai; managing, supervising and inspecting the utilization of the donated materials and funds; coordinating culture exchange and publicity and Chinese education for the overseas Chinese, managing relations the public media, culture communities and Chinese schools of the overseas Chinese and support their work; coordinating the work of Shanghai ‘Chinese education base’; assisting relevant municipal departments in coordinating the publicity of the overseas Chinese affairs; review and approval of key and sensitive news related to overseas Chinese affairs in Shanghai.

The local government's migration and diaspora management approach in Shanghai is city-centric in its implementation. It's also in line with state-planned policy frameworks as it employs a relatively small number of officers that carry out a vast policy agenda, as noted in the table. It is primarily focused on maintaining contacts, managing a wide set of affairs with Chinese co-ethnics and their descendants abroad, and attracting certain resourceful migrant¹¹ communities to actively engage in local development, through return and repatriation assistance.

The overall migration policy structure is open-ended in its scope, but quite restrictive in its content, as only personnel managing the processes can access most of the practical outputs of the above-described policy goals and tasks. The city's official definition of ‘overseas Chinese communities’ is fairly inclusive, but policy initiatives are selective, since they are designed for effective capturing of resourceful migrants with recognized capacities, locally applicable social agency, and with potential and talents.

Unpacking Shanghai's Municipal Government approach

Even though the policy-design related to matters concerning overseas Chinese falls under the competencies of the national government, their work is closely coordinated with city officials in areas of improving the efficiency and transparency of the city's legal and accounting system in the financial sector, as well as introducing measures to attract financial talents (Mu and Seng 2010). Much like the Chinese national migration and diaspora politics, Shanghai's policies are inclusive of all Chinese citizens living abroad and ethnic Chinese with foreign passports (Shen 2006, 220). Since 1989, China has actively pursued policies to connect economic and political benefits of the Chinese diaspora, utilizing various tools that include overseas recruitment and incentive programmes. China's government attempts to foster relations with individuals through commercial, cultural, and political engagement. Over time, the national government, much like each of sub-national units, have understood the strategic importance of the diaspora in economic and political affairs and continue consideration of the diaspora in their policy planning (cf. Chang 2013).

The research reveals Shanghai's institutional governance in migration management is framed as a dynamic component of a static politically hierarchical system. Coordination is based on following macro-level guidelines and is not normatively expansive. The actions are outcome-oriented, but the processes evolve with the efficiency of the results achieved. There are three interconnected main determinations that can be identified as guiding motives of the Shanghai's Office for Overseas Chinese: to increase the capacity of local development potentials through systematic co-option and harnessing migrant's support and resources. Outreach tools used in pursuing these goals work hand in hand with political goals identified in the general developmental orientation of China. While interests are in line with state interests, Shanghai is virtually in a competition with other cities and regions. However, the practical implementation of migrant-oriented policies does not diminish the political or economic interests of other entities, but rather motivates them to compete and enhance their own capacities.

The formulation of local migration initiatives developed in stages as the general principles were established within organizational public governance principles. Their implementation and effectiveness were tested in practice. Activities of Shanghai's Office in the past five years indicate that all officers invest maximum efforts to maintain a high profile, utilizing available corridors to push top policy goals forward (Interview 6, November 2018). The construction of local logistics is set to reinforce functions of the Office as an information hub and exchange centre, with primary aims of integrating operational capacities to attract more resourceful talent-base with a developed socio-spatial structures (Interview 5, October 2018). A review of the adequacy of initiatives and actions taken by the local government indicates positive trends and an increase in number of links created (Interview 2, September 2018).¹²

Local officials managing the migration-outreach portfolio claim to be focused primarily on detailed, systematic research, as well as horizontal capacity building (Interview 3, September 2018). One of the key features of their work is the recognition that mobilization for local development can only be successful if targeted migrants are physically invested and eventually present in the city. Most of the policies they have designed in the past are dependent on Shanghai's hukou ¹³ mobility scheme and migrants’ status. Their focus is set on stimulating assisted returns and improving rates of self-organized engagements by grounding migrants’ attachment to the local economic setting, and developing multi-tiered partnership links with divers groups of individuals. The cooperation scheme aims to develop and foster a two-way management of expected contributions and derived benefits.

This is why most of the migrant targeting done by local institutions is focused on individuals with certain desirable features ¹⁴ that cannot be easily found locally. Based on market-driven needs and assessment of migrants’ background, their set of skills, and professional experience that can be translated into meaningful and desired contributions, local officials focus on designing incentivizing packages that grants migrants access to free healthcare and other social insurance options like housing and free or reduced fees for their children's education. These can be complemented with tax benefits and special access for land purchase arrangements. Offers are extended to individuals, and not groups or specific organizations or associations, which are deemed unlikely to efficiently adjust to the offers made. In that sense, organizational groupings, cultivation of links, and networking initiatives aimed to catch many at once are not necessarily seen as an added value in itself (Interview 2, September 2018). Partially, this can be explained with decision-making structures and commitments of local government to support direct engagement into productive investments, that are based on personal motivations, and not on collective structures that might be compromised by politics, or fall apart, or change the nature of their work (Interview 5, October 2018).

Aside from promoting return and repatriation as tools for co-opting local development, the employees at the Office for Overseas Chinese also work to create opportunities and generate growth internally by promoting external capacity-building mechanisms, especially in seeking to establish strong connections with individuals in entrepreneurship, as well as IT technology management and cooperation. In that way, the municipal officials rely on tapping into ever-increasing labour pool of highly skilled migrants, while maintaining the rights to exercise cost-effectiveness calculations and accumulation of cooperation internally. This is believed to have an impact on the gradual increase the foundations of external actions (Interview 1, September 2018). Given the vast number of Chinese overseas, including thousands of highly qualified Chinese researchers, many of whom can act as bridge-builders between the two research communities and encourage transnational research collaboration (cf. Jonkers and Tijssen 2008; Welch 2015), it is reasonable to expect the intended outcome. This approach, based on refinement and development of friendly discourse externally, however, is considered as secondary to the return- and repatriation-oriented methods, and only serves to compensate for shortcomings generated by non-productive forms of engagement that do not necessarily directly contribute to local development in the long run (Interview 4, October 2018).

Observations and remarks

Among the landscape of research focused on states’ migration management and governance, there is little work examining how that governance plays out on different levels. This research note contributes to the evolving academic and policy conversations on how states of origin engage with their migrant groups abroad. Large parts of the existing works approached this from a state centred perspective. In the case of China, it is not only the national government that coordinates such outreach initiatives, but they are shared among regional and municipal centres – ‘mega cities’, like Shanghai. Each entity follows national guidelines, but acts independently to advance their own position in the system, while refraining from damaging the prospects of others.

In this research note, I examine how city level policies reinforce national policies of migration governance and demonstrate that they lead to competition among different cities for the best results. By tracing the policy-design and implementation schemes, and reconstructing the institutional arrangement of the Office for Overseas Chinese Affairs in Shanghai, I emphasized the importance of ‘micro-level’ factors – the role of local institutions and decision-makers – in shaping the overall state-migrant relationship dynamics. The inclusion of this ‘new’ perspective in the debate helps to understand the elasticity of local institutions managing the processes first-hand in adapting and fitting certain system transformations while balancing claim-making from overseas Chinese.

I focused on exploring ‘framing capacity’, local agency, institutions and processes, assessing the impact of the resulting complexities in the current institutional set-up. I aimed to highlight the dynamics of the relationship between the city officials and ‘resourceful migrants’ they target in their work. Based on the analysis of interviews and available written primary and secondary sources, I observed that Shanghai's Office for Overseas Chinese Affairs pursues cost-effective relations with overseas co-ethnics that are founded on selective engagement with specific resourceful migrant populations. Such relations are rooted in the notion of increase the capacity of local development capacities and potentials through systematic co-option and harnessing migrant's support and resources. Outreach tools used in pursuing these goals work hand in hand with political goals identified in the general developmental orientation of China, and the desired cooperation scheme is set to develop and foster a two-way management of expected contributions and derived benefits.

Before engaging in this particular research, I have already done several dozens of interviews, especially with elite groups. However, the experience in researching China and interviewing Chinese interlocutors, as a non-Chinese researcher, was rather limited. I sought and received from a small group of colleagues at FDDI,¹⁵ who advised me to pay a special attention ‘the insider's perspective’ (i.e. government employees’ perspective). As it was explained, the government informants usually have an ‘information-sharing strategy’ and a tendency to reinterpret the researcher's questions to avoid potentially delicate subjects. Even though this research topic was not treated as highly sensitive, it was important to take a cautious approach, and be aware of the most relevant historical facts and other contexts. When talking to non-government affiliated interlocutors, I was counselled to avoid any fixation on persons and statements that are ‘too forthcoming’, ones that openly and critically speak about the regime in contexts that reflect their romanticized and idealized views about the Chinese society.

One prevalently noticeable feature in the responses of the interviewed government officials was their role in raising the awareness in promoting locally-embedded diaspora-friendly policies, as well as in crafting ‘new trends’ for opening up to the migrants who potentially wish to return to China. The were fully engaged in answering the questions, replied with confidence and without obvious fears of revealing something they should not have, had similar understanding and raised comparable points about the issues at stake. They were not hostile or suspicious of the questions, and overtly seemed to have trusted the process they advocated for. The overall attitude they portrayed during the interviews was ‘we are protective of our municipal economic interests’ and ‘we take all legitimate steps to ensure the best individuals come to live in our city’. However, they have informally omitted to reference the importance of other non-institutional and external factors (like favourable economic conditions and growing job market in Shanghai) or of other active social agents from different social strands (like private business owners, other interest groups, and the academe) that might have impacted the overall ‘repatriation’ process.

This research note has contributed towards opening up a dialogue on realizing that migrant and diaspora management policies solely from a state-level perspective does not help in encompassing and understanding spatially uneven processes taking place at regional and city levels. Its key findings point to other research opportunities to be considered in future research on the topic: Are there certain differences in approach towards migrant and diaspora groups in comparison to other cities and regions in China? How did these policies in Shanghai and other Chinese cities evolve over time? How the local governments’ interactions with migrants (co-ethnics or compatriots living abroad) affect their own institutional and organizational capacity to frame a coherent consensus on management of these relationships?

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to all interviewees in Shanghai, local translators for their valuable help during interviews and in writing this article. I sincerely thank Dr. Dženeta Karabegović for sharing the online resources and for her careful review of the note. Thanks to the anonymous reviewers and to the editors for their thoughtful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

I gratefully acknowledge the support of the Fudan Development Institute FDDI, which funded the data collection and my visiting scholarship research in Shanghai [2017-1100-2]. I would like to thank the project coordinator, Ms. Luxi Jiao, and other members of the FDDI's team for everything they’ve done. I alone, of course, am responsible for any shortcomings that remain in the paper.

Notes

1 By 2013, around 25 states had a diaspora ministry with a direct role in designing and implementing diaspora-related policies. Other countries included diaspora affairs into their existing government bodies (Gamlen 2014).

2 The term ‘overseas Chinese’ is used to denote both migrant and diaspora communities living abroad, including Chinese who maintained Chinese citizenship living abroad and ethnic Chinese with foreign citizenship, and their descendants (cf. Barabantseva 2005). In this paper, I use these terms interchangeably to denote organized or less organized social agents and collectivities that exist and actively maintain their socio-economic engagement abroad, beyond state borders of China, temporarily or as members of permanent social groupings that pursue certain goals.

3 The interviewees’ identities are anonymized. They are marked in the text as follows:

• Interview 1, September 2018 — Shanghai municipal government official OOCA

• Interview 2, September 2018 — Shanghai municipal government official OOCA

• Interview 3, September 2018 — Shanghai municipal government official Econ Department

• Interview 4, October 2018 — a repatriated Chinese migrant who responded to OOCA's outreach

• Interview 5, October 2018 — a Chinese migrant who directly benefited from the policy offered by the OCAO

• Interview 6, November 2018 — a university professor working in Shanghai, an expert on migration.

4 Under the age of 45, remuneration in the amount of 2 million RMB (∼250.000 EUR) for three years, including money for research, a housing subsidy with a moderate salary (cf. Bekkers 2017). There were also some tax reductions and other fiscal benefits, and special offers for land purchase in China, etc. (cf. Bolt 1996).

5 Several ‘Root-seeking’ summer camps for foreign-born descendants of Chinese were set up in China, as an integral part of the policy (Thuno 2001).

6 Excluding Taiwan, which China officially considers as its twenty-third province.

7 Depending on the fiscal and economic resources available to the respective governments.

8 Most of the Chinese international trade is managed through four coastal provinces (Guangdong, Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Shandong), as well as the cities of Beijing and Shanghai.

9 The Foreign Affairs Office of the Shanghai Municipal People's Government complements some of the tasks carried out by the Office for Overseas Affairs, inter alia, to take charge of the reception for the state guests visiting Shanghai, to take charge of the arrangement of the municipal leaders to participate in the foreign activities; to take charge of the organization, management, guidance and overall work of the activities of interaction between the municipality and foreign friendly cities or regions; to take charge of carrying out friendship exchange and cooperation with foreign local governments; to guide the work of reception, exchange and visiting spot construction related to foreign affairs of the municipality; to review the friendship union between the counties or districts of the municipality and foreign parties; and to manage and guide the work of social groups such as Shanghai Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. For more information on structure and functions, please see http://www.shanghai.gov.cn

10 In accordance with the ‘Notice of the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council on Printing and Distributing “Plan on Reform of Organs of Shanghai Municipal People's Government”’ (Ting Zi [2008] No. 17).

11 Defined as skilled and well educated people, like private entrepreneurs, or people who have means and can actively engage in local economy, intellectually and financially, while maintaining a solid economic base abroad.

12 There was no readily available written reports or statistical data to support this claim or any other externally verifiable evidence to back up the last statement.

13 Most commonly defined as ‘local’ or ‘residence’ citizenship, organized according to different logics, characterized the state-controlled allocation of resources, initially designed to restrict internal rural-urban migration within China (cf. Chan 2009; Zhang 2018).

14 China today is in a better position to attract intellectual and business talent than in the 1990s. Ethnic Chinese have been recruited to work and study in China, as well as foreign talents of non-Chinese origins (Zhao and Zhu 2009, 36).

15 Fudan Development Institute (FDDI), affiliated with Fudan University in Shanghai, a comprehensive global research organization focusing on China Development Studies. The author spent some time working at FDDI as a visiting scholar when collecting data for this research note.