Overview

In the People's Republic of China (PRC), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) began its operations in 2007, when the IOM Liaison Office in China officially opened in Beijing. After having held observer status since 2001, on 30 June 2016, China officially became IOM’s 165th member state, opening a new chapter of cooperation. In the same year, IOM Beijing officially became Country Office assuming oversight functions over its Sub-Office in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the PRC, where IOM has been operational since 1952, as well as for its Country Office in Mongolia, overseen by the IOM Chief of Mission for China and Mongolia based in Beijing.

In the past decades, China has increasingly become a source and a destination country for migrants from all over the world: in 2017, there were 10 million Chinese migrants living and working overseas, and approximately a million international migrants registered in China. These growing migration flows bring with them cases of irregular migration from and into China. To respond to an increasingly mobile population, China has taken steps to engage in international migration governance by strengthening regional and international cooperation on migration issues. In December 2018, China supported the adoption of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM).

With China becoming a prominent actor in global migration debates, IOM’s work in the country touches nearly every aspects of migration from facilitating human mobility to preventing and combating irregular migration and human trafficking. Main areas of work include: