Chinese in Japan

Ichiro Suzuki

For centuries, Chinese people have always explored new opportunities outside of the mainland. They often ventured into the rest of Asia, and then to North America since the mid-19th century. They originally came to Japan in the 6th or 7th century. Much later, a wave of immigration took place in the 16th century when the Manchurians conquered Beijing to establish Qing Dynasty replacing the Ming Dynasty. There was another wave in the aftermath of the Opium Wars. That time coincided with the Tokugawa Shogunate’s scrapping of infamous closed door policy after 200 years, which sparked modernization of Japan’s system and economy. In the meantime, the Qing Dynasty was caught in sclerosis. The number grew by the turn of the century. Despite history of only a few decades, Japanese universities drew bright young men from China and some of them became Chinese leaders in the revolutionary governments, by the nationalists and later by the communists. One of them was Zhou Enlai, who was the long time premier under Chairman Mao Zedong. 

Arrivals of Chinese people dwindled after the Communist Party took over the mainland in 1949 and effectively shut themselves up from the rest of the world, until the rise of Deng Xiaoping to the helm of the Party in the late 1970s. By the turn of the 21st century, their arrivals rose. In 2024, the number of Chinese living in Japan has grown to an estimated 890,000 and is set to reach one million mark in 2026, twice as many as they were twenty years ago, and also twice as many as Koreans living in Japan, many of whom came to, or were forcibly brought to the country while the peninsula was a Japanese colony between 1910 and 1945. 

Interest in Japan among well-off and especially well-to-do Chinese people has picked up again in the 2020s. The Communist Party’s handling of COVID-19 has disillusioned and angered many people. They also had growing concerns on safety of their assets under Xi Jinping’s authoritarian rule. For those who want to leave the mainland Japan offers a comfortable living environment, with quietness, cleanliness and relatively low cost of living as well as property rights. As is the case with tourists, the yen’s weakness is making life in Japan appealing, too. On top of these, Japan provides very good and affordable healthcare. Their life can be good.

One distinct trend in the 2020s is Chinese people’s migration to Japan for their children’s education. Today Chinese students account for 10% of a class at many reputed high schools in Japan. It is not really quality of education in Japan that is attracting them. Their main purpose of coming to Japan for them is to escape fierce competition to get into top notch schools in China. Half a century ago, it was called ‘entrance examination war’ in Japan, with a growing number of high school students competing for a relatively limited number of spots at a small number of universities with high reputation. Since then, Japanese society has changed, turning away from excessive competition. When the hard-charged age of super normal economic growth was over, value in society has shifted and the downside of fierce competition was brought to focus. The Ministry of Education began to emphasize ‘less pressure-cooked education’ to relieve children from excessive stress. In recent years, it is often said that the Japanese education system has been cranking out student who are too relaxed, but this fits the age of slow economic growth and the shrinking number of children. 

This appeals to Chinese parents and their children, who are exposed to an even worse entrance examination competition than what Japan went through half a century ago. Some Chinese parents think that their kids’ study hours don’t have to be 24/7 365 days. They arrive in Japan while the child is still in elementary school ange and they enter a competitive junior high school through an entrance examination. And that would be still better than life in China. After six years at high school, they advance to college, the University of Tokyo or else. Though not comparable to elite universities in the U.S., these schools are still good enough. It is said that Chinese students would have to spend 30% less hours in Japan to get into the University of Tokyo than they would in China into a top notch university. They would spend that remaining 30% of their time on something else, sports, extra-curricular activities, hobbies, etc. It’s a better-balanced life. After college they might go to a graduate school in the U.S. After finishing school, they probably would not go back to China where opportunities for very well educated young people are increasingly limited. They may stay in Japan, with a job with Japanese corporations or multi-nationals, or they may move to some other major Asian cities, notably Singapore and Hong Kong. 

To be settled in Japan, many of them buy houses. In Kyoto. Chinese people’s interest in ‘Machiya’ style houses is contributing to maintaining the ancient capital’s sceneries. Without investors, demolition of those wooden houses should accelerate its speed, turning houses into sterile concrete buildings that look unfit for Kyoto. Unlike old houses in Europe, maintaining relatively fragile wooden houses takes extra care. They are vulnerable to fire., too. They may not be particularly safe in an earthquake-prone country. Worse, wooden houses don’t offer much comfort in freezing cold winter time in Kyoto. Despite all these hardships, Chinese people’s interest in Machiya houses don’t wane. Kyoto should be thankful to them. 

Elsewhere in Japan, their strong appetite for houses and condos is causing a problem, as it happened in other cities in the world. They bid up real estate prices, making houses unaffordable for average Japanese. With still very depressed interest rates, however, house prices would have gone up anyway without Chinese investors. Other than that, it’s been said that some Chinese are abusing Japan’s healthcare, by bringing in their family members to Japan putting them under their coverage, but such conducts are only anecdote and hasn’t caused macro level distortions. A small number of them are believed to be a security threat, with their strong link to the Communist Party, as has been experienced in mainly the English speaking world. This is a more serious problem than others. Overall, nonetheless, with their number getting close to 1% of Japan’s population, which is falling slowly, effects of Chinese presence in Japan to the Japanese economy had better be received with a positive note.

About the author: Mr. Suzuki is a retired banker based in Tokyo, Japan.