The Truth About Permanent Residents And The Chinese Menace

[Mulboyne]

The Sankei has a report about trends in foreign residents. This is only a precis so you'd need to look at the Japanese original to get a real feel for the content.

The article says that there are 490,000 permanent residents and 420,000 special permanent residents for a total of 910,000. Most of the piece then focuses on Chinese nationals. An unnamed source at the Kanto Tax Bureau claims that Chinese residents pay little or no tax in Japan because they make a point of claiming deductions for numerous dependents. The official says such claims are probably valid but are particularly characteristic of Chinese residents as opposed to, say, Russian or Korean residents.

Ministry of Justice statistics say the 490,000 permanent residents are part of a total of of 2.21 million foreign residents in Japan (1.74% of Japan's population.) The article points out that special permanent residents used to be more numerous but permanent residents became the larger group in 2007, rising sharply over the last 10 years. There are 142,000 Chinese which means "1 in 3.5 permanent residents are Chinese".

In Ikebukuro Chinatown, the publisher of a Chinese lanquage paper says Chinese began coming in greater numbers to Japan from around 1978 for three main reasons: market reform policies at home; to learn the language; to take advantage of Japan's bubble. He says that, since the one child policy was also enacted, recent Chinese entrants to Japan are not so much driven by economic motives. A 24 year old exchange students says she wanted to try living abroad while still young and chose Japan because it is a safe, developed country. She says few of her high school friends are still in China and many are with her in Japan while others have chosen the US, Australia or Canada.

The article says that Chinese are also increasing as a proportion of total foreign residents, not just permanent residents. In the late 90s, Chinese were second to Koreans but had overtaken them by 1997. In 2008, they numbered 655,000. The newspaper publisher says that their numbers are actually greater than that figure because some Chinese have naturalized. He thinks there might be around a million in Japan.

Essayist Hideyuki Sekioka says with a "reserve army" of 142,000 Chinese permanent residents already in Japan, if trends continue, the country will be sitting on a powder keg. Immigration statistics show that 57,336 Chinese are living in Japan on spouse visas while a further 6,170 are married to permanent residents and also have visas. Sekioka says that although these visas are usually only for three years, they can easily be renewed and represent a route to permanent residency. On top of that, Sekioka says you have around 33,600 long term Chinese residents on various work visas, which have been almost automatically renewed over the years, so this group are practically permanent residents as well. Adding everyone up, Sekioka thinks there's actually a "permanent reserve" of 239,575 Chinese in Japan.

In 2008, some two thirds of the 1.21 million Chinese entering Japan were under 30. This group received an education which emphasized Chinese nationalism and anti-Japanese teaching. Sekioka says that he has no doubts that the majority of Chinese in Japan have good intentions but he draws attention to the Beijing Olympic torch relay when it went through Japan. He found the way Chinese residents massed in Nagano to be slightly menacing and sounded alarm bells. He argues that, in times of national emergency, these permanent residents will likely put Beijing's interests ahead of Japan's and will take their lead from the Chinese Embassy. He says you can't rule out the possibility that their activities may harm Japan. With that in mind, he vehemently opposes the idea of local suffrage for permanent residents.

The article ends with a comment that foreign residents are not likely to decrease in number and quotes an NGO figure who argues that Japan should work towards better ways of integrating them in Japan rather than demonizing them.