It’s politically incorrect to admit not wanting New Zealand to be inundated with Chinese migrants – but what do I care about political correctness other than spitting in its face?
It’s not individual Chinese migrants that I object to at all because my experience of them is that they are generally admirable – polite, intelligent, hard-working and delightful people. And they were here long before most of my European ancestors. The upside of the Chinese is their wonderful food and the downside is language issues when faced with less than adequate English speaking skills. Assuming these two factors cancel each other out, the migrant issue remains.
One objection is that their en-masse arrival here is the result of shonky backroom deals between high ranking Chinese and NZ politicians where large amounts of Chinese money ended up in NZ political party coffers ostensibly for the purpose of oiling the wheels of migration.
The NZ Fraud Office is investigating Jami-Lee Ross’s claim that Simon Bridges received a $100k donation from Yikun Zhang that was broken down into $15k amounts to avoid being publicly declared.
“Zhang is no stranger political donations and a picture is beginning to emerge of an extremely wealthy businessman with powerful political connections in China – and local politicians.
Zhang, who lives in the affluent Auckland suburb Remuera, is currently in South China hosting Southland mayor Gary Tong on a nine-day trip.
Maori activist Tame Iti is also there. The two have been pictured in Chinese media visiting a ceramics micro-book art museum.”
Stuff
And then there’s that niggly little worry in the back of the mind that New Zealand is being played by the Chinese Government which could see us as a target to house their burgeoning population and instigate communism by stealth.
Chinese migration growth became evident in 2014 when Chinese immigrants overtook UK immigrants for the first time as the largest source of New Zealand migrants.
“The biggest source country for long-term arrivals was China with a net gain 10,060 in the 12 months to March [2019]. This was up 31.6% compared to the previous 12 months, plus there was also a net gain of 545 people from Hong Kong.”
South China Morning Post
Chinese migration would certainly be more acceptable if the arrangement was reciprocal, but there are very few who follow in Rewi Alley’s footsteps to live in mainland communist China. Net migration immigration between New Zealand and China only goes one way.
We aren’t concerned about migration of other Pacific peoples because their populations are tiny, but China’s population is huge and opens up the possibility of New Zealand being over-run.
“The current population of China is 1,437,101,352 as of Wednesday, February 5, 2020, based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data. China 2020 population is estimated at 1,439,323,776 people at mid year according to UN data.”
Worldometers
China is the most populated country in the world whereas we rank 126th. Our population is expected to reach 5 million in 2020 compared to China’s nearly 1.5 billion. Is it racist to think about how we would be impacted by large scale Chinese migration? They have the funding to do whatever they want.
“Harvard political scientist Graham Allison […]tells us that China’s GDP was less than $300 billion in 1980, a figure that had risen to $11 trillion by 2015. The country’s total trade with the outside world came to just $40 billion in 1980, but in 2015 it was $4 trillion—a hundredfold increase.
Allison has plenty more shockers up his sleeve: “For every two-year period since 2008, the increment of growth in China’s GDP has been larger than the entire economy of India.
Even at its lower growth in 2015, China’s economy created a Greece every sixteen weeks and an Israel every twenty-five weeks.” In fact, since the Great Recession of 2008, 40 percent of all the economic growth in the world has occurred in just one country: China.
Allison quotes Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s founding father, for the coup de grâce: “It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of the world.”
Quillette
Is it racist to examine the effect of the biggest player in the history of the world on little old New Zealand?
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