报道 2012年11月02日
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times
陈括，30岁，动身前往澳大利亚前在北京的寓所。
北京——今年30岁的陈括曾拥有很多中国人都梦寐以求的一些东西：一套属于自己的单元房和一份跨国公司的高薪工作。但10月中旬的一个午夜，她却登机飞往澳大利亚，去那里开始前途未卜的新生活。
就像每年离开的数十万中国人一样，驱使她离开的是一种强烈的感觉，那就是在国外会过得更好。尽管中国最近几年经济上取得了巨大成功，但她还是向往澳大利亚，因为那里可以提供更健康的环境和完善的社会服务，还可以提供在一个保障宗教自由的国度建立新家的自由。
对中国移民来说，美国是一个受欢迎的目的地。
“中国太压抑了——有时候，我一周要在上班的那家审计公司工作128个小时，”离开前几个小时，陈括在她北京的房子里说。“而且，在国外养育信仰基督教的孩子会更容易一点。澳大利亚更自由一些。”
中国共产党正在为11月初的领导人大换届做准备，与此同时，像陈括这样拥有专业技能的人才正在以创纪录的速度流失。最新完整数据显示，2010年有50.8万中国人离开中国，去了34个经济合作与发展组织(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development)成员国，人数比2000年增长了45%。
单个国家的记录显示这个趋势还在继续。2011年，美国接收了8.7万来自中国的永久居民，一年前的数字则是7万。中国移民使得从曼哈顿中城到地中海岛国塞浦路斯的一系列大相径庭的地方房价攀升。曼哈顿的一些房地产中介正在学习普通话，而塞浦路斯则提供获取欧盟护照的途径。
很少有中国移民把政治作为离开的理由，这样的沉默却凸显了他们的许多担忧。他们说不计任何代价搞发展的战略已经毁掉了环境，堕落的社会和道德体系也让中国变得比他们小时候还要让人感到冷漠。总之，他们有一种这样的情绪：尽管中国在最近几十年里取得了很大成就，它的政治和社会走向仍然很不明确。
“中国的中产阶级对未来，特别是子女的未来没有安全感，”诺丁汉大学(University of Nottingham)研究中国移民的副教授曹聪称。“他们认为中国的政治环境不稳定。”
看起来，大多数移民都只是把外国护照当做应对最坏情况的一种保险，并不想彻底抛弃中国。
上海一家工程公司的经理在匿名的条件下称，他今年早些时候在纽约市的一个房地产项目上投了资，希望最终能拿到绿卡。他还是一个言辞犀利的时事评论博主。他说，当地公安人员找他谈过话，致使他获取美国护照的愿望变得更加迫切。
“绿卡是一种安全感，”这位经理称。“这里的体制不稳定，你都不知道下一步会发生什么。我倒想看看，下面几年这里会变成什么样。”
政治动荡也加重了这种情绪。今年初，共产党高官薄熙来的丑闻曝光，震惊了全国。根据官方报道，他的辖区竟然充斥着谋杀、拷打以及腐败活动。
“哪怕是在最高层，哪怕到了薄熙来的级别，仍然有很多不稳定因素和风险，”奥尔巴尼大学(University at Albany)移民问题专家梁在称。“人们不知道两三年后会发生什么。”
不安全的感觉也影响到了那些经济情况相对较差的中国人。根据中国商务部数据，去年年底有80万中国人在国外工作，1990年的数字则只有6万。很多人都在做小生意——开出租车、捕鱼或者种地——还担心自己这个阶层错过了中国的30年繁荣期。尽管在此期间，中国有上亿人脱离了贫穷的生活，中国仍然是世界上贫富差距最大的国家之一，而经济也越来越被大公司主导，这些大公司很多都是国有企业。
“这种潮流的动因是害怕在中国成为输家，”牛津大学(Oxford University)人口学家项彪称。“出国已经成了一种或许能带来一些机会的赌博。”
在海滨城市温州经营一家餐馆的张林（音译）便是这样一个忧心忡忡的人。他所在的大家庭里的农民和生意人把钱凑在一起，送他儿子去加拿大的温哥华读高中。家里人希望他能进入一所加拿大的大学，将来的某个时候能获得永久居留权，说不定还能让他们家所有人都移民过去。“这就像一把椅子，椅子腿不止一条，”张林说。“我们希望在加拿大安放一条腿，以防这儿的这条腿折了。”
如今，移居国外的形势已不同于过去几十年。上世纪80年代，学生开始出国，其中许多都在1989年天安门事件后留在了西方国家，因为那些国家主动为他们提供居留权。上世纪90年代，没钱的中国移民付钱让“蛇头”把自己带到西方去。他们有时会搭乘货船，比如1993年在纽约市搁浅的“金色冒险号”(Golden Venture)。这一现象当时引起了国际社会的关注。
如今，多年的繁荣意味着数百万人具备了合法移民出国的途径，要么通过投资项目，要么通过送子女出国留学，寄希望于获得一个长远的立足点。
北京一家传媒公司的秘书王瑞金（音译）表示，自己和丈夫正在劝说23岁的女儿申请新西兰的研究生院，希望女儿能留在那里，为家里人打开出国的大门。她说，自己和丈夫都觉得女儿拿不到奖学金，因此家里人正在借钱，就像是做长期投资。
“我们感觉，中国不适合像我们这样的人，”她说。“想在这里取得成功的话，你要么得堕落，要么就得有关系。我们更喜欢过稳定的生活。”
这个话题已经在官方媒体上得到了广泛的讨论，这或许表明了政府对这个问题的关注。中国人民大学的教授方竹兰在半官方杂志《人民论坛》上撰文说许多人是在“用脚投票”，还把大规模移民出国现象称为“民营企业家们对自身权利在现有体制框架内的保护和实现程度的消极评价”。
这股潮流并不完全是单向的。鉴于西方各经济体趋于停滞，就业机会受到限制，2011年归国的学生人数较前一年增加了40%。政府也设立了一些高调的项目，通过暂时提供各种额外待遇和特权来吸引中国科学家和学者回国。然而，诺丁汉大学的曹聪教授表示，这些项目取得的成果并没有宣传的那么大。
他说，“归国人员都能想到，五年之后，他们也将变成普普通通的中国人，处境和那些已经在国内的同事一样糟。这就意味着，很少有人会被吸引回来长期居留。”
许多移民问题专家表示，这些数字和其他一些国家过去的经历是一致的。上世纪六七十年代，台湾和韩国都有过人口大量流向美国及其他国家的经历，尽管当时它们的经济正在起飞。财富和更好的教育让人们有了更多移民出国的机会，那时的许多台湾人和韩国人之所以出国，部分是因为担心受到政治打压，就和现在的中国人一样。
尽管那些国家最终都走向了繁荣，迎来了开放社会，但许多中国人面临的问题却是，幕后选定的以习近平为首的下一届领导班子派系林立，是否能够带领中国进入政治和经济发展的新阶段。
“我在这里很兴奋，但又对未来的发展感到很迷惑，”去年从哈佛大学(Harvard University)获得硕士学位的彭磊说。如今，他在北京经营着一家名为Ivy Magna的咨询公司。眼下他虽然留在中国，但却表示，在他的100位客户中，很多人要么拥有外国护照，要么就希望拥有外国护照。大部分人都拥有或管理着中小型企业，这样的企业受到了偏向国有企业的政策的挤压。
“有时候，你自己的财产和公司状况也会变得非常复杂，”彭磊说。“有些人可能会希望生活在更透明、更民主的社会里。”
Amy Qin、Adam Century和Patrick Zuo对本文有研究贡献。
翻译：张亮亮、陈亦亭
——纽约时报中文网
Wary of Future, Professionals Leave China in Record Numbers
November 02, 2012
BEIJING — At 30, Chen Kuo had what many Chinese dream of: her own apartment and a well-paying job at a multinational corporation. But in mid-October, Ms. Chen boarded a midnight flight for Australia to begin a new life with no sure prospects.
Like hundreds of thousands of Chinese who leave each year, she was driven by an overriding sense that she could do better outside China. Despite China’s tremendous economic successes in recent years, she was lured by Australia’s healthier environment, robust social services and the freedom to start a family in a country that guarantees religious freedoms.
“It’s very stressful in China — sometimes I was working 128 hours a week for my auditing company,” Ms. Chen said in her Beijing apartment a few hours before leaving. “And it will be easier raising my children as Christians abroad. It is more free in Australia.”
As China’s Communist Party prepares a momentous leadership change in early November, it is losing skilled professionals like Ms. Chen in record numbers. In 2010, the last year for which complete statistics are available, 508,000 Chinese left for the 34 developed countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That is a 45 percent increase over 2000.
Individual countries report the trend continuing. In 2011, the United States received 87,000 permanent residents from China, up from 70,000 the year before. Chinese immigrants are driving real estate booms in places as varied as Midtown Manhattan, where some enterprising agents are learning Mandarin, to the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, which offers a route to a European Union passport.
Few emigrants from China cite politics, but it underlies many of their concerns. They talk about a development-at-all-costs strategy that has ruined the environment, as well as a deteriorating social and moral fabric that makes China feel like a chillier place than when they were growing up. Over all, there is a sense that despite all the gains in recent decades, China’s political and social trajectory is still highly uncertain.
“People who are middle class in China don’t feel secure for their future and especially for their children’s future,” said Cao Cong, an associate professor at the University of Nottingham who has studied Chinese migration. “They don’t think the political situation is stable.”
Most migrants seem to see a foreign passport as insurance against the worst-case scenario rather than as a complete abandonment of China.
A manager based in Shanghai at an engineering company, who asked not to be named, said he invested earlier this year in a New York City real estate project in hopes of eventually securing a green card. A sharp-tongued blogger on current events as well, he said he has been visited by local public security officials, hastening his desire for a United States passport.
“A green card is a feeling of safety,” the manager said. “The system here isn’t stable and you don’t know what’s going to happen next. I want to see how things turn out here over the next few years.”
Political turmoil has reinforced this feeling. Since early this year, the country has been shocked by revelations that Bo Xilai, one of the Communist Party’s most senior leaders, ran a fief that by official accounts engaged in murder, torture and corruption.
“There continues to be a lot of uncertainty and risk, even at the highest level — even at the Bo Xilai level,” said Liang Zai, a migration expert at the University at Albany. “People wonder what’s going to happen two, three years down the road.”
The sense of uncertainty affects poorer Chinese, too. According to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, 800,000 Chinese were working abroad at the end of last year, versus 60,000 in 1990. Many are in small-scale businesses — taxi driving, fishing or farming — and worried that their class has missed out on China’s 30-year boom. Even though hundreds of millions of Chinese have been lifted from poverty during this period, the rich-poor gap in China is among the world’s widest and the economy is increasingly dominated by large corporations, many of them state-run.
“It’s driven by a fear of losing out in China,” said Biao Xiang, a demographer at Oxford University. “Going abroad has become a kind of gambling that may bring you some opportunities.”
Zhang Ling, the owner of a restaurant in the coastal city of Wenzhou, is one such worrier. His extended family of farmers and tradesmen pooled its money to send his son to high school in Vancouver, Canada. The family hopes he will get into a Canadian university and one day gain permanent residency, perhaps allowing them all to move overseas. “It’s like a chair with different legs,” Mr. Zhang said. “We want one leg in Canada just in case a leg breaks here.”
Emigration today is different from in past decades. In the 1980s, students began going abroad, many of them staying when Western countries offered them residency after the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising. In the 1990s, poor Chinese migrants captured international attention by paying “snakeheads” to take them to the West, sometimes on cargo ships like the Golden Venture that ran aground off New York City in 1993.
Now, years of prosperity mean that millions of people have the means to emigrate legally, either through investment programs or by sending an offspring abroad to study in hopes of securing a long-term foothold.
Wang Ruijin, a secretary at a Beijing media company, said she and her husband were pushing their 23-year-old daughter to apply for graduate school in New Zealand, hoping she can stay and open the door for the family. They do not think she will get a scholarship, Ms. Wang said, so the family is borrowing money as a kind of long-term investment.
“We don’t feel that China is suitable for people like us,” Ms. Wang said. “To get ahead here you have to be corrupt or have connections; we prefer a stable life.”
Perhaps signaling that the government is concerned, the topic has been extensively debated in the official media. Fang Zhulan, a professor at Renmin University in Beijing, wrote in the semiofficial magazine People’s Forum that many people were “voting with their feet,” calling the exodus “a negative comment by entrepreneurs upon the protection and realization of their rights in the current system.”
The movement is not all one way. With economies stagnant in the West and job opportunities limited, the number of students returning to China was up 40 percent in 2011 compared with the previous year. The government has also established high-profile programs to lure back Chinese scientists and academics by temporarily offering various perks and privileges. Professor Cao from Nottingham, however, says these programs have achieved less than advertised.
“Returnees can see that they will become ordinary Chinese after five years and be in the same bad situation as their colleagues” already in China, he said. “That means that few are attracted to stay for the long run.”
Many experts on migration say the numbers are in line with other countries’ experiences in the past. Taiwan and South Korea experienced huge outflows of people to the United States and other countries in the 1960s and ’70s, even as their economies were taking off. Wealth and better education created more opportunities to go abroad and many did — then, as now in China, in part because of concerns about political oppression.
While those countries eventually prospered and embraced open societies, the question for many Chinese is whether the faction-ridden incoming leadership team of Xi Jinping, chosen behind closed doors, can take China to the next stage of political and economic advancement.
“I’m excited to be here but I’m puzzled about the development path,” said Bruce Peng, who earned a master’s degree last year at Harvard and now runs a consulting company, Ivy Magna, in Beijing. Mr. Peng is staying in China for now, but he says many of his 100 clients have a foreign passport or would like one. Most own or manage small- and medium-size businesses, which have been squeezed by the policies favoring state enterprises.
“Sometimes your own property and company situation can be very complicated,” Mr. Peng said. “Some people might want to live in a more transparent and democratic society.”
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