Mobility, Freedom and China’s Global Reach: Insights from Professor Nyíri Pál

Dr. Nyíri Pál is Professor at the Institute of Global Studies, Budapest University of Economics (Corvinus) and Professor of Global History from an Anthropological Perspective at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam. His research focuses on the international mobility of Chinese elites, offering useful insights into China’s changing role in an interconnected world. In an exclusive email interview with The Statecraft Institute (TSI), Professor Nyíri Pál discusses the dynamic changes happening in Chinese migration, transnational business, digital nationalism and statecraft in an interconnected but fragmented world.

TSI - How do you interpret the changing role of Chinese middle-class migration into Europe in the current geopolitical climate?

Professor Nyíri Pál – Ronald Inglehart posited that growing affluence triggers a value transition, meaning that as people’s incomes grow, non-material (or ‘postmaterial’) values such as freedom become more important. For a long time, as Andrew Nathan among others noted, this did not seem to be happening in China, or at least was not visible from the outside. But the restrictions imposed during the Covid epidemic made it so, including the White Paper movement of youth protests and accelerated emigration of the middle class. Regardless of which pathway it takes formally – studying, working abroad, or investment migration – it is increasingly driven not by material gain but by a desire to live freer lives. I use freedom here in a general sense: the ability for themselves or their children to live lives they prefer. Typical elements include more free time, less competitive pressure, and healthier environments. This phenomenon is likely not limited to China: as the global middle class becomes increasingly non-Western, migration dynamics change worldwide, and places seen as offering better lifestyles from Europe to Southeast Asia become destinations. So far we know little about this.

TSI – In your studies of China-Europe business interactions, such as Europeanisation strategies of Chinese firms, what patterns stand out most strongly in how “corporate identity” is constructed across cultures?

Professor Nyíri Pál – As they become multinational, Chinese corporations suffer from a ‘liability of origin’ that, say, Korean or Indian firms do not have. For example, although the safety and environmental record of Korean companies in Hungary is worse than that of Chinese companies, the brunt of a generic negative attitude is born by the latter. Therefore, some Chinese corporations have downplayed their association with the country in their branding. But this is difficult as the Chinese state, and nationalistic consumers at home, expect them to represent its government line, so some of them have been subject to backlash at home. Internally, although Chinese companies now employ multinational work forces, few seem to have developed a conscious strategy of how to deal with differing work cultures and employee expectations. Most appear to take an ad hoc approach. A typical tactic is employing locally born or trained ethnic Chinese to serve as cultural brokers between local employees and Chinese management.

TSI - You have written extensively on media, nationalism and global circulation of ideas. How do you see “digital nationalism” reshaping international relations and public discourse?

Professor Nyíri Pál – Nationalism in the online sphere is part of a broader complex of phenomena that include declining trust in experts, deliberative politics, and representative democracy, relativisation of truth claims, and the rise of populism generally. It is hard to tell how much the proliferation of online nationalism actually shapes decisions states make. It has been argued that it puts decision makers under pressure even in undemocratic systems such as China’s, but, as we see in Hungary’s case, a seemingly successful spiral of nationalist opinion leaders and increasingly radical followers can suddenly collapse.

TSI – From your anthropological perspective, how should policymakers rethink “statecraft” in a world where culture, capital and migration are deeply intertwined?

Professor Nyíri Pál - We can only understand statecraft if we look at it closely, that is, follow policy from the moment someone first comes up with it in a meeting room until it is either executed, botched, or subverted by actors in the field. In other words, we need to train the ethnographic lens on the state and its auxiliaries, as Johan Lindquist and Xiang Biao have done for migration. Many times, we will find that state actions are not simple consequences of either realist or idealist policy considerations.

TSI – How do you understand the tension between increasingly mobile lives and the simultaneous hardening of national identities?

Professor Nyíri Pál - Being mobile does not necessarily make one less nationalistic. We also cannot assume that people who have benefited from cross-boundary mobility welcome others to do so as well. This is demonstrated by the share of anti-immigration parties in the immigrant and ethnic minority vote in many countries. Middle-class Chinese in Hungary typically approved of the former Orbán government’s hardline stand against immigration. Even more surprisingly, when we ask applicants from Asia to our IR programme what they see as the biggest global challenge, they often name migration.

TSI – As a final question, what key developments in migration and China’s global engagement should we be watching in the years ahead?

Professor Nyíri Pál – I expect to see the line between labour and middle-class migration blur as more better-educated young people migrate to find a better life, not only in material terms. Contrary to the conventional understanding of migrant workers caring only about making as much money as possible to send home, in recent research on Southeast Asian labour migrants in Eastern Europe my colleagues and I found that some were college-educated and were attracted in part by what they imagined living in Europe offered. On China, one of the most interesting developments is the globalisation of China’s digital infrastructure, covering both the platforms and the hardware behind shopping and entertainment. If it succeeds, it may have profound consequences.

Disclaimer: Views expressed are of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Statecraft Institute.