The Communist Party is trying to tighten its grip on the Chinese diaspora

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Ms Song is typical of many Chinese who have moved to the West in recent years: well-educated and wealthy, unlike the labourers who dominated earlier emigrant communities. The number of Chinese abroad has doubled since 1990. It has risen particularly fast since 2000. The pandemic heightened the desire of many members of the elite to leave, as their resentment grew of covid-related controls and the party’s ever-tightening restrictions on freedom of expression. China ended its battle against covid late in 2022, but its faltering economy and high youth unemployment are fuelling people’s anxieties. Many young Chinese now use the term runxue, “the art of running”, to convey their desire to flee.

There are about 10.5m people living outside mainland China who were born on the mainland. Only the Indian, Russian and Mexican diasporas are larger. Some of these Chinese are among the country’s richest people. In many countries, they have long dominated wealth-related visa schemes. More than 70% of the 81,000 investor visas issued by the American government to dollar-millionaires between 2010 and 2019 were given to Chinese citizens. Since 2012 some 85% of people who have received Australia’s “golden visas” for investing over A$5m ($3.3m) in the country have been from China. All but 41 of the 1,300 people who applied for the equivalent Irish scheme in 2022 were Chinese.