As for any country, China’s domestic experiences and national interests affect its participation in multilateral efforts to address displacement. While China’s domestic treatment of asylum seekers and refugees is beyond the scope of this paper, a brief overview of China’s legal, geographical and historical context provides a useful background to the analysis of its overseas humanitarian action.
China is a signatory of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees. China ratified both instruments in 1982, one of the first countries in Asia to do so. However, ratification alone is not a sufficient indicator of a country’s engagement and commitment to assisting and protecting forcibly displaced people. In China’s case, significant gaps persist today. For example, the country does not have a national asylum law and protection framework.
Tied with Russia, China has the most land borders (14) of any country in the world, extending for approximately 14,000 miles. These borderlands are very diverse. Cross-border movements, borderland rural development, informal economies and border security are issues that local Chinese governments regularly manage, in contrast to other donor countries that are geographically more isolated, such as Japan. The space for discrepancies between Chinese central and provincial government interests and policies is of particular note here. For example, in China’s southwest Yunnan province at the border with Myanmar, Beijing generally devolves authority for the management of ethnic minority groups living there to the provincial government. This demonstrates that a variety of actors are involved in China’s policies on cross-border issues across the country’s diverse geographies.
Historically, Chinese engagement on displacement issues is not new – but rather, long-standing and mixed. For example, during the Second World War, approximately 20,000 Jewish people found refuge in China. Between 1978 and 1982, China admitted over 250,000 Vietnamese refugees who crossed the border into southern China, resulting in what has been described as ‘one of the most successful local integration programmes’. Today, China borders countries with significant refugee concerns – such as Myanmar and North Korea – but enacts stricter border policies. For example, China enforces a hard border in the northeast with North Korea, and has been criticized by the UN for cases of forced repatriation and refoulement.
Today, refugees and asylum remain sensitive topics in China. For example, attitudes towards refugees on Chinese social media are generally quite negative. Scholar Song Jing’s critical discourse analysis of social media posts on the Zhihu platform pointed to Chinese nationalism, Islamophobia and anti-Western sentiments as contributing to negative attitudes towards refugees. The sensitivity of the topic within Chinese society is a key factor to consider when analysing prospects for Chinese current and future involvement in overseas humanitarian responses.
