“A complex set of formulas caps immigration from China at about 150,000 people per year. For a country with 1.4 billion people, that’s not even a drop in the bucket. Radically increasing or eliminating this limit would do much more to halt China’s rise as a global power than harming American users by banning TikTok. Many young Chinese would jump at the chance to move to the U.S.
Why would so many Chinese be eager to leave their homes to move thousands of miles away? For starters, the United States is much, much richer. Despite decades of unprecedented economic growth, China’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is still 80 percent lower than America’s. For all its development and flashy infrastructure projects, China is barely a middle-income country. As of 2022, more than half of the country lives on less than $10 per day, compared to only 3 percent of Americans and about 2 percent of Europeans.
Further, China has a repressive, authoritarian government. Despite China’s harsh penalties for dissent, many of its citizens have taken to the streets in recent months to speak out against state oppression. This suggests that many Chinese, especially young and educated ones, are unhappy with the Communist regime.”
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“China already faces a demographic crisis. Its population is aging and now declining, with its social safety net increasingly strained. The CCP, long reliant on economic growth for its legitimacy, faces the possibility that China will grow old before it grows rich. Bright young people drive economic growth in any nation. Their exodus would doom China to languish in economic and demographic turmoil.
Allowing more Chinese people into American would not only harm a perceived adversary; it would actively help the United States as well. Immigrants have been an economic engine for America. Immigrants and their children make up a disproportionate share of patent holders, as well as nearly half of the founders of Fortune 500 companies. Even an average year of immigration to the U.S., according to some estimates, increases GDP by as much as $72 billion.”