Window on Eurasia: Chinese Migration to Kazakhstan isn’t Chinese, Moscow Expert Says

Paul Goble

 

            Staunton, October 4 – Most “Chinese” immigrants to Kazakhstan are in fact members of non-Han ethnic groups from Xinjiang, including not a few ethnic Kazakhs known as “Oralmany,” and the largest share of Kazakhs going to China are students attending Chinese universities and colleges.

 

            These are just some of the unexpected trends reported by Elena Sadovskaya, a specialist on international migration at the Moscow Institute for Economic Forecasting, in an interview she gave to Zhanar Kanafina which is published in the current issue of Kazakhstan’s “Karavan” weekly (caravan.kz/article/93343).

 

            Not only is “Chinese migration to Kazakhstan not especially ‘Chinese,’” Sadovskaya says, it includes “not only ethnic Chinese (Hans) but also Kazakhs, Uyghurs, Dungans, Uzbeks, Koreans and even [ethnic] Russians.”  But what is especially interesting is that different ethnic groups dominate different parts of the flow.

 

            Hans predominate among those seeking work, but those interested in business include both Hans and Dungans, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs. And those seeking permanent residence status are “primarily ethnic Kazakhs,” known as “Oralmany,” who have been living in China for some time but now are returning to their historical homeland.

 

            The number of Chinese workers coming into Kazakhstan in fact peaked six years ago, when 10,140 did so, Sadovskaya continues. Now, their number has fallen to about 6,000 to 7,000 a year. More important, the Chinese form only about a quarter of all the gastarbeiters coming into Kazakhstan, despite widespread beliefs that they are a far larger group.

 

            At the same time, she says, “the migration of [Kazakhstan] students to China is much larger than that in the opposite direction.” In the current academic year, “about 10,000” Kazakhstani students are studying in China, “eight to ten times” the number of young people from China studying in Kazakhstan – and most of those are ethnic Kazakhs.

 

            One disturbing pattern, Sadovskaya says, connected with migration from China is that “according to the 2009 [Kazakhstan] census, 39,000 Oralmans have not become citizens of Kazakhstan.” Indeed, only about half of those ethnic Kazakhs returning from abroad in general and China in particular have done so.

 

            There are several reasons for this, she suggests. On the one hand, many of these people do not want to give up the special benefits Oralmans can receive from the government.  But on the other, they have real language problems: Their Kazakh is different, and they are used to the Arabic script rather than the Cyrillic one used in Kazakhstan.

 

                Despite the relatively small number of immigrants from China and the fact that many of them are Kazakhs rather than Han, polls show that Kazakhstan residents are increasingly hostile to immigrants as such, Sadovskaya says. Between 2007 and 2012, the share of Kazakhstan residents expressing hostility toward Chinese immigrants increased from 18 to 33 percent.

 

            Sadovskaya sums up the situation in the following way: “It is possible to call Chinese migration a mirror image of the problems which exist in Kazakhstan.” Were Kazakh officials not corrupt, there wouldn’t be many illegal immigrants, and were the quality of higher education in Kazakhstan higher, there would not be as many Kazakhs going to study in China.