My Passport Makes Me a Millionaire

Sometimes there are issues in China that only effect small amounts of people, but strike such a chord with most Chinese that these issues come up again and again in conversation. “Investment Immigration” is one of these, and today I saw a video meant to explain (and satire) those who take part.

Investment Immigration is a system, available in many countries (including the US), whereby if a businessperson invests a sufficient amount of money and creates a sufficient amount of jobs, they will be given a green card and rights to live in that country. The video’s title, “The Chinese Migration Wave”, highlights the few tens of thousands that have bought their way out of living in China—if not out of being Chinese entirely.

I’ll translate some bits of the video as we go along, click here to watch!

It starts with a song about rowing a small boat, but the narrator says that “this boat isn’t going north, nor south like the great explorer Zheng He, but instead to the old enemies of China”—represented by Uncle Sam. Depending on your destination, your ticket might cost 10,000RMB-10,000,000RMB ($1,600-$1.6 Million USD). A few thousands immigrate to Canada and the US, though Australia receives the most overall immigrants from China, almost 30,000. The video continues: “Despite how America is last in national happiness, to rich Chinese people, America is nonetheless a great attraction.”

Deng Xiaoping, the former party Chairman and architect of the economic reforms that have brought China from a starving nation to a rising power over the last few decades, had a famous quote regarding how progress would happen: “Let some get rich first.” The idea was that progress was going to have to be uneven at first, and the implication was that those who benefitted first have an obligation to the nation to help those who didn’t get rich first. This quote pairs perfectly with the flight of the rich from the country. “To those who got rich first—people from central Beijing and Shanghai—$1.6 Million ain’t nothing!” (In Beijing dialect, they use the phrase “It’s just a toilet—no big deal.”)

The video reminds us there are three types of people that do investment immigration: rich people, rich people, and rich people. Following the third “rich people” line, a message in English saying “festival f**k what exist” comes onto the screen. After hours of analysis and several empty bottles of scotch later, I still have no idea what that means.

“What makes all these rich people want to leave?” The video asks. “Large welfare systems, safety, visa-less travel to 100+ countries, top-notch education, clean air, safe milk…” The list goes on and on.

“Of course, only a small number of people can investment emigrate… so the rest of us will have to go forward with the fatherland! Because after all, it is as the sages have said: ‘One cannot travel out of poverty.’”

Though investment immigration is an issue which almost nobody watching this video will ever come across in real life, it continues to be pop up online and in conversation amongst many Chinese. I think the reason that it is such a big issue—beyond the obvious wealth inequality issues that arise—is that the strong sense of Chinese identity means that those who leave the country are still considered Chinese by those who remain. The video asserts that most that leave have “foreign green cards and Chinese hearts.”

Being Chinese is not something that can be discarded, even if you wish to leave the troubles of a developing nation behind, and if someone is still Chinese after immigrating to the US or Australia, then the whole situation reeks of abandonment of one’s country and people. After all, the investment money that you are giving to foreigners(!) was money that was earned off of the development of China. If you earned that money, then you “got rich first” thanks to policies that advanced the economy first along the coast, specifically in cities such as Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Beijing. You owe it to those people who want to get rich now to stay in the country and help in improve.

I have an uncomfortable view towards investment immigration. On one hand, it is surely in the best interest of America to encourage this type of investment, and so few people actually use it that I don’t need to start looking at every Chinese-American my age and wonder if their parents paid a fortune to relocate to America.

It makes things easier that as an American, I can also side-step a lot of the moral “you must stay” argument, because just as it is impossible for these emigrants to become “un-Chinese,” I can never become “Chinese.” Chinese people, whether I like it or not, have made this not my issue.

But it is uncomfortable to know that in the subtext of every conversation I have with people my age that I represent a country that their countrymen are willing to spend millions of dollars to “flee” to. It creates a very uncomfortable dynamic when I go onstage, because behind any insinuation that China is not the greatest place in the universe reveals an uncomfortable chasm.

I may not be rich, but somewhere in my room is my American passport, and thanks for investment immigration, both I and the audience knows that that booklet is worth a million dollars. Listening to a millionaire perform onstage is very different than a peer—and, as most Chinese assume that foreigners don’t know about things such as investment immigration, the worst part is that it is assumed I don’t know how rich I really am.

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