Chinese Immigration, Overseas Chinese And China 's Economic Growth

The number of overseas Chinese had reached50million by the end of2011. Nowadays overseas Chinese are widely distributed all over the world. This paper compares the status, source, pattern, scale, occupation and distribution of Chinese immigrants in different areas of the world and finds that instead of intensively immigrating into Southeast Asia, highly developed areas such as North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia have become primary destinations for new Chinese immigrants; mainland of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, three of the most important Chinese immigrants sending areas, are significantly different from each other in terms of the scale, pattern and distribution of immigration. Along with the increase of migration scale and the improvement of economic performance of overseas Chinese, the remittance inflows of China has been growing rapidly. Through the analysis of the impact of remittance on China’s economic growth, we find that remittance inflows have both positive and negative effects on economic growth. Particularly remittance inflows can increase the foreign exchange earnings, promote investment and employment as well as consumption, and increase the income of migrants’ families. Using time series data over a30year period, the Granger test shows that growth in remittances does lead to economic growth in China in the long run. Therefore, the government should make rational use of remittances.