Comment by sashank_1509
5 hours ago
What is the demographic looking to immigrate to Japan. I’m surprised to hear Chinese as my outsider view was that China was as good if not better place to live compared to China, is it because they’re afraid of their government and want a liberal democracy instead?
Or is folks from poorer and more distressed countries looking to come to Japan.
> I’m surprised to hear Chinese
Considering BM was just a way to pay into Japanese residency (or use it as a sort of landlord visa), it's not surprising that a rich country that's a 4-hour flight away made up of the bulk of foreign residents on business manager status.
Anecdotal evidence, but pretty much every time I heard someone plan to apply for BM, it was to pay their way into Japan rather than actually start a business. When I did hear business plans, it was often "moving my software consultancy" or "buying an apartment with cheap Yen and leasing it out as an Airbnb".
As an interesting data point: this article from Sankei News claims a 96% reduction in applications for the BM visa since the new requirements took effect.
https://www.sankei.com/article/20260502-Z4W4O4YAQRFK3FZIAQDC...
Better passport for their kids, better and more reputable, internationally connected banking system to store their wealth. The latter bit is particularly important as China limits the amount of money one can send out of the country.
How would this give a passport to their kids? Isn’t Japanese citizenship notoriously difficult to obtain?
It was always ridiculously easy to get Japanese citizenship. 5 years of residency, don’t break any laws including traffic, pay your bills on time. Done.
It has recently been changed so that you now require 10 years of residency.
https://www.turning-japanese.info/p/misinfo.html
I think it’s probably easier and safer for a Chinese national to obtain Japanese citizenship than American citizenship.
If you’ve got ten years (or until recently, five) of residence and can pass the interview process, the acceptance rate for Japanese citizenship is something like 95%+.
On the other hand the process of getting American citizenship can run up to twenty years or more, it’s very expensive, and throughout the process the immigrant has few rights and can be deported for basically no reason, up to the moments before the naturalization ceremony.
If I were a freshman at Fudan thinking about my exit strategy, I know which one I would pick.
China cracks down on corruption from time to time and lots of rich Chinese got their riches through corruption, so they're always looking for places to stash their ill gotten gains, their family and an offramp for themselves.
Helping launder this dirty Chinese money is a huge business here in BC (Canada) and across the world.