Why China Isn’t Hosting Syrian Refugees
BY FEBRUARY 26, 2016The civil war in Syria, now spanning almost half a decade, and the Islamic State’s territorial advances there have led to the world’s worst refugee crisis in decades. More than 4.7 million Syrians have left their homeland, pouring into neighboring countries as well as Europe. The influx of refugees has strained resources in the region and fomented xenophobia and nativism in countries throughout Europe, helping to buoy the rise of extreme right-wing parties there.
But China, the world’s most populous nation and its second largest economy, has sat on the sidelines. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Beijing, by the end of August 2015, there were nine refugees and 26 asylum seekers from Syria in China. They were among the 795 UN-registered “persons of concern,” or displaced people, mainly from Somalia, Nigeria, Iraq, and Liberia living in China temporarily while waiting to be transferred. The East Asian giant faces complex political, demographic, religious, and economic challenges that have prevented it from considering allowing migrants inside its borders. Even so, if China is to become a responsible global power, the country must reevaluate the ideology that has prevented it from taking an active role in ameliorating a global crisis.
Chinese authorities argue that Western countries caused the meltdown in Syria that resulted in the mass exodus, making its resolution their responsibility. In an October 2015 opinion piece in Communist Party mouthpiece People’s Daily, Wu Sike, former Chinese Ambassador to Egypt and Saudi Arabia and former Special Envoy on the Middle East, argued that the Middle East “democratization” agenda of the United States and its allies lies at the root of the migrant refugee crisis. In a Feb. 15 piece in party journalSeeking Truth, Zhang Weiwei, director of the Center for China Development Model Research at Fudan University in Shanghai, contended that the “European refugee crisis is a price” that Western countries must pay for their “arrogance.” Chinese web users largely agreed. After the photos of Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi’s body washed up on a Turkish beach went viral in September 2015, netizens in China shared in the grief and largely blamed the United States for the chaos in Syria which had led to the boy’s drowning.
