大批韩国人撤离上海

大批韩国人撤离上海

Downturn drives expat exodus from Shanghai

Until recently half the 100,000 Koreans who had made Shanghai their home lived clustered together on the outskirts of the city in “Little Korea”, a neighbourhood where the street signs are in Korean and the shops are full of LG products and kimchi food.

But with the economic crisis hitting the South Korean economy and currency hard, Little Korea is being rapidly vacated.

Korean companies are shipping workers home, cutting off school fees and repatriating wives and children without their menfolk to cut costs. They are the first large wave of expatriates to have begun leaving China's financial capital as a result of the global economic crisis but their departure raises the prospect of a broader exodus of foreigners who may take investment, skills and job creation opportunities with them.

The press officer of the Korean consulate in Shanghai could not answer questions about the exodus of her countrymen – because her post had just been abolished and she was being sent back to Korea.

Kim Heewon, president of Seoul Plaza, Little Korea's central shopping complex, estimates that 20 per cent of the Korean population has returned home, many of them in the past few weeks.

“Almost no one comes in any more,” says a clerk in Seoul Plaza's golf boutique. Throughout Ms Kim's 4,000- square-metre department store, Korean-speaking staff loiter next to Korean- branded toys, clothing and furniture, with no customers in sight.

Japanese relocation companies, meanwhile, say there has been a marked rise in Japanese families returning home from Shanghai compared with last year and they expect the pace to pick up further during the traditional peak relocation months of March and April.

Each of the Japanese housewives minding toddlers at the vast Mandarin City housing complex, where an estimated 70 per cent of residents are Korean or Japanese, say they know at least one family that has been sent home while the breadwinner remains in China.

The Japanese consulate estimates there were 48,000 nationals in Shanghai 18 months ago, but says it has no figures for the number that might have left since.

The pain has not been limited to Shanghai. A parent with children enrolled in an expensive Beijing international school says most of her daughters' Korean classmates have left the school almost overnight.

A labour activist in the northern province of Shandong, where Korean investment has totalled $23.4bn (€18.4bn, £16.2bn) since 1988 and has accounted for 40 per cent of total foreign inflows, says the owner of a Korean- invested furniture factory left before the Chinese lunar new year in January and it has yet to reopen.

Local authorities that previously published regular data on absconding factory owners halted such reporting after thousands were left jobless when the entire Korean management of Yantai Shigang Fibre vanished last year.

“I would guess that even more have been closing since then given the worsening macroeconomic environment,” says Yuan Xiaoli, a professor at Qingdao University of Science and Technology.

Back in Little Korea, Ms Kim says the flow of Koreans is not one way. “Workers are going home, but entrepreneurs are coming here from Korea,” she says. “Our Korean people think [since] China is bigger than Korea, there must be more opportunities here than in Korea. There is no dream in Korea, but our Korean people think there is still a dream in China.”

Ms Kim is putting her money where her mouth is. She is planning to open a large golf goods store in Seoul Plaza early next month.

直至最近，侨居上海的5万韩国人还聚居在市郊的韩国城。在这个地方，街上的招牌用韩语书写，商店里则充斥着LG产品和韩国泡菜。

但随着经济危机重创韩国经济及韩元，韩国人正迅速撤离上海。

韩国企业正遣返员工，削减学费，遣送员工家属回国，以削减成本。这是在全球经济危机影响下，外国人撤离中国金融之都的第一波大潮。但他们的撤离，使人们看到了将有更多外国人撤离的前景，这些人可能会带走投资、技术和就业机会。

韩国驻上海领事馆的新闻官无法回答有关本国侨民离华的问题——因为她的职位刚被撤消，她本人将被召回国内。

上海韩国城主要购物中心Seoul Plaza的总裁Kim Heewon估计，在这里居住的韩国人有两成已经回国，其中许多人是近几周离开的。

“几乎再也没有人光顾。”Seoul Plaza内高尔夫用品店的一名店员说道。在Kim Heewon 4000平米的百货店里，讲韩语的职员徜徉在韩国品牌的玩具、服装和家具之间，却见不到顾客的人影。

与此同时，日本搬家公司表示，与去年相比，从上海回国的日本家庭显著增加，预计在三、四月份传统的搬家高峰期，这种趋势将进一步加速。

在上海占地广阔的名都城住宅区，那些在家里照顾孩子的日本家庭主妇表示，至少有一户人家已经回国，只留下赚钱维持家计的人。据估计，名都城的70%住户是日本人或韩国人。

日本领事馆估计，18个月前，有4.8万日本人居住在上海。但此后有多少人离开，该馆没有相关数据。

受到冲击的不止是上海。一位孩子在北京某高档国际学校就学的家长表示，几乎一夜之间，她女儿班上的大多数韩国同学就离开了。

山东省的一位劳工维权人士表示，一家韩资家具厂老板在1月份中国农历新年之前离开，至今尚未开工。自1988年以来，山东省的韩国投资累计达到234亿美元，占外来投资总额的40%。

去年烟台世刚纤维有限公司的韩国管理层集体消失，导致数千人失业后，当地负责定期公布有关逃逸工厂老板数据的政府机构停止了此项工作。

青岛科技大学教授袁晓莉表示：“鉴于宏观经济环境不断恶化，我估计，自那以后又有更多的工厂关闭。”

在上海的韩国城，Kim Heewon表示，韩国人的流动并非单向的。“工人们正在回国，但企业家正从韩国来到这里。”她表示：“我们韩国人认为，中国比韩国大，这里的机会肯定比在韩国多。在韩国没有梦想，但我们韩国人认为，在中国仍有梦想。”

Kim Heewon不光是嘴上说说，她正要付诸行动。她计划下月初在Seoul Plaza开一家大型高尔夫用品店。

此文章由琥儿提供，佳禾外语进行整理。　

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