Asia Specific
Why North East Asia is wary of immigration
Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is tightening visa and residency rules for foreigners amid growing concerns about the pace of immigration in recent years. But Japan’s overall population continues to shrink alongside neighbouring China and South Korea, raising a question: Why don’t these countries embrace larger-scale immigration as a way to offset the decline? Takaichi’s changes to permanent residency rules, visa fees and compliance processes aim to enforce and tidy up an existing system that has already opened the door to foreign workers. But until the last decade or so, immigration was largely a foreign concept in Japan, and the relatively rapid increase in foreign residents to more than 3% of the total population has prompted concerns and debate. Population decline is also affecting neighbouring China, where authorities are encouraging couples to have more babies. But China isn’t looking to bring in foreign workers, and less than 0.1 per cent of the resident population there is from abroad. In this episode of the Asia Specific podcast, host Mariko Oi is joined by the BBC’s Japan correspondent Kurumi Mori and Shawn Yuan of the BBC’s Global China Unit to discuss attitudes towards immigration across North East Asia, and how people in Japan and China view the West’s experience of multiculturalism.
