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在线翻译:
szdaily -> Opinion -> 
Easing visa policy an urgent need for China
    2016-08-01  08:53    Shenzhen Daily

    Winton Dong

    dht620@sina.com

    IN the United States, one-third of patent holders, more than half of the founders of its top 50 listed companies, and nearly half of the doctorate degree holders in science and technology are immigrants.

    That’s the reason why I am so happy to hear the news that starting today Shenzhen will implement 16 favorable policies for expatriates working in the Qianhai and Shekou area of the Guangdong Pilot Free Trade Zone (FTZ) in an effort to encourage high-level, innovative foreign talents and overseas Chinese talents to start their work, study or businesses in the city.

    The new policies have made many breakthroughs, such as allowing foreign students at overseas higher learning institutions to work as interns here, and providing international students who graduate from Chinese universities (including those in Hong Kong and Macao) with a two-year personal affairs residence permit.

    Meanwhile, these changes still leave much room for further improvement. For example, policy No. 3 states that foreigners who make investments in the Guangdong FTZ directly, or through companies of which they are controlling shareholders, totalling US$1 million or above over three years, and have good taxation records, are eligible to apply for permanent residence in China. The threshold is still very high for young foreigners. Personally speaking, I doubt how many young talents from abroad (even developed Western nations) are financially strong enough to invest US$1 million in China. I also doubt how many successful foreign businesspeople who have actually invested US$1 million in China want to get permanent residence in the country.

    Nevertheless, this is a good beginning, and a good beginning is half done. As we all know, there is no perfect place on our planet. Life in every country has its positive as well as negative aspects. The immense growth of the Chinese economy since the 1980s has attracted numerous international companies and institutions to establish headquarters in the country. Economic opportunity is the biggest motivation for the global migration from developed nations to emerging ones such as China.

    But for many years, China’s permanent residence, or green card, has been joked about by expatriates as the world’s most difficult card to get. On Aug. 15, 2004, the Chinese Government issued the Regulation on Examination and Approval of Permanent Residence of Aliens in China, under which China created permanent residence, commonly known as the green card system, to grant qualified foreigners the right to live in China permanently.

    Foreigners who hold valid passports and Chinese green cards experience no restrictions while they stay in China; they can enter and exit China without a visa and enjoy the same national treatment as Chinese citizens. It is estimated that there are more than 800,000 expatriates currently living in China and nearly 8,000 of them hold permanent residence permits in the country, which means that less than 1 percent of the expatriates living in China have green cards.

    

    Compared with China’s gigantic population, currently counted at 1.4 billion, such a small number of foreigners are not even worth mentioning. Statistics show that about 2.6 million talented Chinese have furthered their studies abroad since China opened its door to the outside world in the early 1980s, and more than 50 percent of them have chosen to stay abroad after finishing their education. If we add to this number the Chinese emigrating to other nations through investment or other channels during the past years, the total number of talented or rich Chinese settling down overseas has already surpassed 10 million.

    We call this phenomenon “migrant deficit.” Such a deficit poses a great danger to the further development of China. In the coming years, talents in various disciplines will be the core competitive force for any country trying to excel and remain on the cutting edge. Like migratory birds, talents need to flow freely to find the best environment for themselves. To better cope with global competition for human resources, the Chinese Government should further adjust and ease its visa policy to make sure that visas will not be a hurdle that prevents high-end overseas talents from coming to China.

    (The author is the editor-in-chief of the Shenzhen Daily with a Ph.D. from the Journalism and Communication School of Wuhan University.)

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