About "Virtual Engagements on Global China" Speaker Series
This public lecture series features international scholars and experts on a wide range of topics related to China's global presence and impacts. Each seminar will begin with a 30-min presentation, followed by another 30 mins of Q&A. The series is free and open to the global public. Participants must register before each seminar.
"Virtual Engagements on Global China" Speaker Series : China's Global Migration in the New Millennium
Speaker: Biao XIANG (Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Oxford; Director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany)
Date and Time: 18th February 2021 (Thurs) 20:00 (HK) / 12:00 (London)
Format: Zoom Webinar
Language: English
Please REGISTER HERE to secure your place
Abstract:
China is the world’s largest source country of migrant students (making up 14% of the global total in 2018) and investors (PRC investors made up 75% of the recipients of US EB-5 visas in 2017). Why are those who have benefited the most from China’s development eager to leave China, the rising centre of the world economy? This lecture suggests that China’s global migration in the new millennium reflects the internationalization of life reproduction among those who have means. Chinese migrate overseas in order to benefit from better education, care, air, food and water, and personal and wealth security. They do so with considerable financial cost. All these benefits are meant to maintain and enhance life, instead of making money, thus “reproduction”. This lecture positions China’s on-going outflows in a historical context, and explores the relations between migration, capital accumulation, and shifts in the global political economy.
About the Speaker:
Biao Xiang 项飙 is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford, and Director of Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. Xiang’s research addresses various types of migration – internal and international, unskilled and highly skilled, emigration and return migration, and the places and people left behind – in China, India and other parts of Asia. Xiang is the winner of the 2008 Anthony Leeds Prize for his book Global Bodyshopping and the 2012 William L. Holland Prize for his article ‘Predatory Princes’. His 2000 Chinese book 跨越边界的社区 (published in English as Transcending Boundaries, 2005) was reprinted in 2018 as a contemporary classic. His work has been translated into Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish, German and Italian.