Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America's Immigration Tradition (review)

554 China Review International: Vol. 5, No. 2, Fall 1998© 1998 by University ofHawai'i Press engagement or commitment to serious cultural inquiry, belies an arrogance that is still too common within Western scholarship. Professor Smith acknowledges the impossibility ofborrowing directly from the Taiwan model in light of discussions of educational reform in the United States. But in using the American educational system as an underlying benchmark for his analysis, he operates with such blinders that he forfeits any opportunity for pursuing a comprehensive analysis of Taiwan education from the very start. His willingness to essentialize and totalize, to ignore the cultural complexity and internal policy conflicts that are expressed within every educational system, in order to present a simplistic picture of Taiwan to a presumably uninformed audience is deeply disturbing. Unfortunately, scholars interested in diis area will have to look elsewhere in order to find work that addresses the topic with the seriousness that it deserves. Irving Epstein Illinois Wesleyan University Irving Epstein is an associate professor in the Department ofEducational Studies at Illinois Wesleyan University with interests in contemporary Chinese education and comparative education. mm Paul J. Smith, editor. Human Smuggling: Chinese Migrant Trafficking and the Challenge to America's Immigration Tradition. Washington, D.C.: The Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1997. xv, 207 pp. Paperback, isbn 0-89206-291-6. This concise work is the product of a 1996 meeting of experts, who were brought together in Hawai'i by the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, on the issue of the rise in the smuggling of illegal immigrants from the PRC, especially into the United States. The participants represented the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, the International Organization for Migration, the Toronto Police Service, academia, and the press. The CSIS claims to be nonpartisan and hopes with its publications to provide the public with information and analysis on important international issues. This study should interest Americans curious about the growing problem of illegal immigration in general. Other readers may be engaged first of all by the stratagem of human smuggling and further by the conditions of near-slavery in American "safe houses" and sweatshops. However, in ac- Reviews 555 cord witii this journal's focus on China, this review will concentrate on the "push" factors: the conditions within China that encourage exodus, and who die Chinese illegal immigrants are. One of the most intriguing questions addressed is why Chinese would wish to leave a China undergoing economic expansion and reform. In "Chinese Migrant Trafficking: A Global Challenge," editor Paul J. Smith provides answers to the question ofwhy Chinese are leaving. Smith argues that China's booming economy, led by die southern coastal provinces, including Fujian, from which most illegal immigrants depart to the United States, masks fundamental problems that "push" millions to move. Smith describes the rapidly expanding population, officially growing by fourteen million each year—not counting, he hypothesizes, another six million "unregistered" births. Decentralization and corruption are seen as weakening social controls and opening new ways out ofpoverty. The burgeoning population in space-deficient farming areas stirs the low-income surplus to look elsewhere for greater opportunities. Most of the rural unemployed end up in China's mushrooming cities, where incomes are better than in the countryside. However, the working conditions in the cities are often grim, especially for the many recent migrants, some ofwhom live in illegal shantytowns. The problem of redundant workers who have been let go from downsizing state enterprises adds to the growing ranks of "mass unemployed." The question ofwhether the economic reforms will result in adding enough jobs to absorb all ofthe low-paid workers is still debatable. Ironically, the regions of coastal China from which the vast majority ofemigrants depart are enjoying rising prosperity. Family wealth is needed to afford the extravagant cost of smuggling people over long distances, through gouging middlemen (snakeheads), to expensive "safe houses" in die United States. Marlowe Hood has contributed a most enlightening chapter on the China side ofthe immigration issue, based on interviews with "several dozen" residents from Fujian Province who had die experience or desire...