"Ex-China Vietnamese Illegal Immigrants": The Creation and Contestation of an Unwieldy Acronym

On May 17, 1981, Hong Kong immigration officers were confronted with 107 individuals claiming to be Vietnamese. They arrived in a wooden sailboat, but unlike most Vietnamese arriving in Hong Kong, their boat had not embarked from Vietnam but from Pingsha, China. At the time, Hong Kong was still a British colony. It offered all incoming Vietnamese first asylum, refugee status, and the promise of resettlement in a third country – typically a wealthy, majority white, English-speaking country like the United States, Canada, or the UK. In contrast, Hong Kong labeled all “border crossers” from China as “illegal immigrants,” and officials quickly returned those apprehended back to China with few questions asked.

Complicating this stark two-tier policy was this population of Chinese Vietnamese arriving in Hong Kong via China. The Chinese Vietnamese population had long had an ambiguous relationship to rights, political status, and citizenship in Vietnam during the post-World War II period. That instability dramatically increased during the military hostilities between China and Vietnam in the late 1970s, causing significant numbers of Chinese Vietnamese to leave the country. This population flummoxed Hong Kong and UNHCR officials. Who were these people? Were they Chinese? Vietnamese? Did they deserve refugee status like other Vietnamese or were they Chinese citizens who should live in China?

In this instance, a forty-one year old man whom the Hong Kong immigration officials categorized as “Chinese” spoke for the group. He was from Quang Ninh in northern Vietnam, and like more than 200,000 Chinese Vietnamese individuals, he had fled to China during the height of the Sino-Vietnamese conflict in 1978 and 1979. He would have been thirty-eight years old at the time. The Chinese government had “resettled” him on the Yingchong Overseas Chinese Tea Farm in Guangdong Province. However, he did not want to live in China. Toward the end of 1980, a Chinese government official approached him and hundreds of other Chinese Vietnamese transplants and asked if they were “willing to accept Chinese citizenship.” His answer to Hong Kong immigration officials was telling: “According to Source, most had refused [Chinese citizenship], as they all hoped for eventual resettlement overseas.” ^{, 1}This man now, along with dozens of others, bribed local Chinese officials, secured a vessel, and took to the seas. His boat first landed in Macau and then went on to Hong Kong. He claimed he should receive refugee status like the almost 80,000 Vietnamese before him, many of whom were also Chinese Vietnamese.² In explaining his story to Hong Kong officials, he seemed keenly aware of the value of citizenship, and in this case, the value of not being a Chinese citizen.

From the point of view of both the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the British colonial government of Hong Kong, this Chinese Vietnamese population had already relocated to China and resettled there. As such, they did not have the same claim to refugee status as those arriving direct from Vietnam. In good bureaucratic fashion, administrative officials coined an odd and clunky acronym: this man and others like him would henceforth be characterized as Ex-China Vietnamese Illegal Immigrants, or ECVIIs.

In good bureaucratic fashion, administrative officials coined an odd and clunky acronym: this man and others like him would henceforth be characterized as Ex-China Vietnamese Illegal Immigrants, or ECVIIs.

We should always raise our eyebrows when governments create new categories and legal statuses. Often new categories are meant to exclude, and “ECVII” is a case in point. The history and creation of this odd neologism sheds light on the muddy interplay between categories of ethnicity, refugee status, citizenship, and leads to an unexpected truth: While the label of statelessness often creates intractable problems, in this instance it actually offered protection and opportunity. These Chinese Vietnamese migrants did not want to be recognized as Chinese citizens; they gained more by being seen as Vietnamese refugees. A lack of citizenship here actually improved their prospects.³

Now to be clear, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, journalists, UNHCR officials, and Hong Kong immigration officers did not categorize the incoming Chinese Vietnamese as “stateless.” Moreover, in a strict reading of the 1954 UN Convention relating to stateless persons, most Chinese Vietnamese migrants would not have fallen under the convention’s mandate. But if we look beyond rigid UN definitions, and beyond the specifically European history that gave rise to those categories, we see a far more complex landscape in which both individuals and authorities sought to negotiate the spaces between citizenships and statelessness to their own advantage. In this case, individuals designated as ECVIIs recognized a range of political possibilities and sought to improve their futures by negotiating between various state structures – here, between the poles of Chinese citizenship and Vietnamese refugeedom. How many of those “resettled” in China in 1978 and 1979 then tried to navigate these slippery categories by clandestinely escaping China via boat, landing in Hong Kong, and claiming to be Vietnamese refugees from Vietnam? The experiences of these “ECVIIs” demonstrates the hairiness of legal categories, the fraught and contested nature of statelessness, and the limits of the “solution” of citizenship.

Chinese communities in Vietnam: North and South

Chinese migration to Vietnam has a long history, going back hundreds of years. By the 19^th century Chinese migrants constituted a significant minority population within Vietnam. They often retained their Chinese nationality, which sometimes came with privileges and other times came with discrimination.⁴ Vietnamese leaders and later French colonial rulers developed policies to try and control the Chinese community in Vietnam, sometimes declaring all children born to Chinese Vietnamese couples to be definitively Vietnamese, and other times heavily taxing the Chinese community.
France claimed authority over what it called the Union indochinoise (Indochinese Union) from 1887 until its military defeat, at the hands of the Viet Minh, forced its withdrawal in 1954. To further complicate matters, the Qing Dynasty instituted a 1909 nationality law defining Chinese nationality through jus sanguinis - bloodlines. ⁵

After the First Indochina War and the 1954 Geneva Conference – at which the French gave up their colonial claim to Vietnam – divided the country, North Vietnam and South Vietnam took opposing approaches to their local Chinese Vietnamese populations. South Vietnam, under the leadership of Ngo Dinh Diem, followed the path of most Southeast Asian countries: it decreed that all Chinese born in Vietnam were Vietnamese and mandated naturalizations. Chinese in Vietnam who refused to naturalize would be formally excluded from key economic sectors, and the government even threatened deportation to Taiwan. Ngo Dinh Diem’s government also required all Chinese to take Vietnamese names in this required assimilation process, which later made it even more difficult to measure the demographics of the community. Such policies followed the pattern of many other Southeast Asian countries, which viewed Chinese nationals as potential internal threats to newly independent nation-states.⁶

In North Vietnam, the government took a different tack. As a self-proclaimed revolutionary socialist government, it viewed China as an ally in its fight against first the French and then the Americans. It therefore encouraged Chinese Vietnamese to become Vietnamese citizens, but declared that naturalization would be voluntary – a matter of “patient persuasion,” not forced as in the corrupt and capitalist South. To facilitate the government’s goal of encouraging the Chinese formally to naturalize, China stopped issuing them passports after 1961, and Hanoi now regulated their travel and documents. This bureaucratic sleight-of-hand was meant to cement the Chinese community’s reliance on the North Vietnamese government, but it also highlighted the ambiguity of individuals’ political status. Technically still Chinese nationals, many became “people without passports.” ⁷ Amplifying these ambiguities was the fact that for many Chinese Vietnamese in the North, the incentives to naturalize were mixed at best. Hanoi often viewed urban Chinese Vietnamese as Chinese citizens, entitled to autonomy over education and community organizations. Plus, those who retained their Chinese citizenship were exempted from the North Vietnamese military draft. As one man from North Vietnam later explained, “We had the best of both worlds. The Hoa (Chinese) in the north had all the rights and privileges of Vietnamese citizenship and none of its disadvantages.” ⁸

This privileged status changed dramatically after the country unified in 1976. With its victory against the United States, the new Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV) no longer viewed China as a close and necessary ally. Instead, hostilities between China and Vietnam rapidly escalated, with consequential effects on Chinese Vietnamese. The Vietnamese government now began requiring that all Chinese naturalize and become Vietnamese citizens. This was in stark contrast to its earlier, more tolerant policies in North Vietnam, and it reneged on its principled promise that those in southern Vietnam would be able to freely choose their nationality. With military hostilities heating up, thousands of Chinese Vietnamese began fleeing the country.

Chinese Vietnamese Exodus and the Third Indochina War

When the South Vietnamese capital Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army in 1975 approximately 125,000 Vietnamese evacuated, and most resettled in the United States. For the next few years, the number of people fleeing Vietnam remained modest. However, along with its policies of imprisoning former South Vietnamese military officers, the new revolutionary Vietnamese government also began a concerted campaign against its Chinese Vietnamese population, uprooting their businesses and “encouraging” them to leave the country.⁹ This was related both to Vietnam’s anti-capitalist policy domestically and its international policy, which was increasingly hostile to China and would lead to a brutal border war in 1979. This military dispute was part of the larger Third Indochina War and a new geopolitical alignment, whereby China supported the Khmer Rouge and opposed the Vietnamese government.

Many Americans and Western Europeans are familiar with the 1970s photographs and media accounts that documented the thousands of Vietnamese being rescued at sea. Images of people crammed into overcrowded, unseaworthy boats dominated the visual iconography of the era. What most American and European readers did not realize was that a sizeable number of the Vietnamese fleeing the country were not just South Vietnamese escaping a newly communist government, but Chinese Vietnamese. In the south, Chinese Vietnamese often bribed their way onto outgoing ships, handing over significant amounts of gold to Vietnamese officials. The vast majority landed in Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. In the north, the Vietnamese government pressured the Chinese Vietnamese to either relocate to the New Economic Zones (euphemisms for rural outposts) or leave for China. ¹⁰ Scholar Pao-min Chang characterized these relocations more bluntly as expulsions. ¹¹More than 200,000 Chinese Vietnamese crossed into southern China, often forcibly, making China a somewhat unheralded major resettlement country.

Once in China, what political status would these individuals hold? Would they simply be Chinese citizens? Would they be viewed as “Overseas Chinese”? Might they be Vietnamese? And how might the individuals embrace or reject any of these categories? China initially resettled them all on Overseas Chinese Worker Farms, and so regardless of their work or status in Vietnam, these men and women now found themselves delegated to farm work or fisheries. From the point of view of China, the UNHCR, and the international community, these individuals were now Chinese citizens who had been resettled and reintegrated into China. However, Chinese Vietnamese who had left by boat and landed in Malaysia or Hong Kong or Indonesia, were deemed to be “Vietnamese.” As Vietnamese, western governments saw them as “refugees,” and there was an international outcry and vast resources invested in helping them resettle in the West.

As a result, many Chinese Vietnamese now in China saw this geographic division as arbitrary and unlucky. Perhaps they too could be “Vietnamese refugees,” rather than Overseas Chinese, and resettle in the west. To accomplish this, most looked to Hong Kong. ¹²The trick was, however, that they had to leave China by boat, and when they arrived in Hong Kong, it had to appear as if they had come directly from Vietnam. If officials believed they had been resettled in China, they would be seen as Chinese, and promptly deported. So, they had to claim a Vietnamese identity and demonstrate that they had never been to China, but were rather Vietnamese coming from Vietnam. The ambiguousness of their status, and the ways in which they could manipulate these porous categories led to this new category: the Ex-China Vietnamese Illegal Immigrant.

Many Chinese Vietnamese now in China saw this geographic division as arbitrary and unlucky. Perhaps they too could be “Vietnamese refugees,” rather than Overseas Chinese, and resettle in the west. The trick was, however, that they had to leave China by boat - and when they arrived in Hong Kong, it had to appear as if they had come directly from Vietnam.

ECVII’s: Ex-China Vietnamese Illegal Immigrants

Hong Kong and UNHCR officials remarked that these were among the hardest cases. How could an immigration officer determine if the individual (who often spoke both Chinese and Vietnamese) was arriving from northern Vietnam or from China? They lamented that Chinese Vietnamese coming from China would lie about their boat journeys and try to establish that they had originated from northern Vietnam not China. For the incoming individuals, their goal was to appear “Vietnamese” only. Their key aim was to present themselves as lacking Chinese citizenship and fleeing Vietnam under duress.

The most typical cases were Chinese Vietnamese who had been compelled to resettle in China between 1978 and 1979 and sent to Overseas Chinese Farms. Many resented these jobs, because they had no previous agricultural experience, and as a result, they wanted to leave for Hong Kong. ¹³For example, a twenty-nine year old man who left northern Vietnam via the “Friendship Pass” in June 1978 was fairly typical. On arrival in China, he was resettled on an Overseas China Farm, and he had to work in jobs similar to those of other Chinese on the farm. Assigned to be a driver, he was “unable to accept the hardships of life on an Overseas Chinese Farm” and he found the living conditions difficult. His family was supposed to receive clothing, furniture, and housing from the Chinese authorities as part of the resettlement program, but there was local corruption, and he received less than he was entitled. ¹⁴Deciding to leave the collective farm, he recruited other families, in total fifty persons, who could pay for the boat and the middlemen. Together the group left the coast “under the cover of darkness.” Chinese officials stopped the boat, but when they realized all the passengers were Chinese Vietnamese, they accepted the bribes and let the boat continue onward to Hong Kong.

The British Colonial Office documents provide more clues into how these individuals tried to navigate, and potentially manipulate, a refugee structure in which they gained more options from being Vietnamese or stateless, but would be promptly deported if they were categorized as Chinese. For example, Hong Kong immigration officials questioned an incoming boat, which the passengers “initially claimed to have come from Haiphong [northern Vietnam],” but on closer interrogation admitted its departure was from China. ¹³One of its passengers, a forty-four year old fisherman, told his story. He came from northern Vietnam, and he and his wife had travelled to China in August 1978 by boat along with two hundred people. On landing, the Chinese government assigned him to a collective farm. He explained that the local pay was not unreasonable, but “he was not a farmer.” He decided to “leave clandestinely with his family for Hong Kong.” Perhaps to the immigration officials’ chagrin, he did not provide additional details about his second escape. ¹³While the documents are silent about the formal question of citizenship – e.g. had the Chinese government bestowed citizenship on this man (voluntarily or involuntarily) and had he accepted it? Had this Chinese Vietnamese man once been recognized as a Vietnamese citizen, or had the Vietnamese government defined him as Chinese? At this juncture, his claim would be strongest if he could demonstrate that he was coming directly from Vietnam, a refugee, and as Chinese Vietnamese, a persecuted, and arguably stateless minority. However, if he could not make his case, he was burdened with too much citizenship – as recognition of Chinese citizenship would be a sufficient barrier to resettlement.

To complicate matters even further Chinese Vietnamese who were deported sometimes tried to enter Hong Kong a second time. They were dubbed “double-backers.” For example, an eighteen year-old Chinese Vietnamese man from northern Vietnam, arrived in China, and sent to an Overseas Chinese Farm. He left China and attempted to enter Hong Kong via boat, but he was apprehended and returned to China. From the documents, it seems that he intentionally withheld the name of the farm from Hong Kong officials, and so he was deported to a farm where he wasn’t registered, from which he was consequently rejected. The individual used this rejection to leave the Overseas Chinese Farms, and he attempted to gain work in a printing factory. When the Chinese government reassigned him to a collective farm, he refused. Having failed to gain entry into Hong Kong, and on return, to escape collective agriculture, he took to the seas again. ¹³On his second apprehension in Hong Kong, immigration officials lamented the rising number of “double backers,” – individuals who they had already deported, and who were still arriving and claiming to be Vietnamese, and thus refugees deserving of resettlement in the west.

The colonial officials felt stymied by this population, and it was quite difficult to determine who was who. They complained that they couldn’t always distinguish between Chinese Vietnamese coming from Vietnam (who would be accepted as refugees) and those coming from China (who would be deported). Plus, they added: “They lie.” Sometimes, the Chinese officials even backed up the Chinese Vietnamese lies, denying that certain migrants had been resettled in China, because the state farm managers saw them as “troublemakers” and didn’t want them back. ¹⁵

Colonial officials complained that they couldn’t distinguish between Chinese Vietnamese coming from Vietnam (who would be accepted as refugees) and those coming from China (who would be deported). Plus, they added: “They lie.”

The immigration officials feared that this loophole could create a way for Chinese citizens to pretend to be Chinese Vietnamese and thus evade deportation back to China. For example, in 1980, Hong Kong authorities arrested two Chinese “illegal immigrants” who pretended to be Chinese Vietnamese in order to escape China’s collective farms. These men had become friends with Zheng, a Chinese Vietnamese man who had been resettled on a tea farm. Together they plotted to escape to Hong Kong, and Zheng helped them pretend to be Vietnamese. They learned a few Vietnamese phrases and wore Vietnamese style clothes. Zheng advised them to “rely on some Chinese Vietnamese refugees who were escaping at the same time,” if they were questioned by Hong Kong authorities. ¹⁶

The men were, in fact, arrested. Although these two men had been stopped at the border, the Hong Kong officials were not confident that they would be able to detect others. They were a bit baffled by the mixed group of Chinese and Chinese Vietnamese, and saw it as a new development in trafficking or “snakehead activities.” They concluded: “It is not known whether the seven Chinese Vietnamese refugees who made good their escape, will eventually surface as refugees, or as IIs [illegal immigrants] (thus disqualifying themselves for overseas resettlement), or indeed will ever surface.” ¹⁶ In other words, they admitted their inability to stop all the Chinese Vietnamese (and Chinese) from entering Hong Kong illegally.

In 1981, immigration officials characterized the ECVIIs as a “major problem” with almost two boats arriving each week and hundreds of Chinese Vietnamese trying to claim asylum and deny their earlier resettlement in China. The number reached almost 4,000 people by the summer of 1981. For obvious reasons, we cannot know how many people successfully convinced immigration officers that they had come straight from Vietnam. Hong Kong officials decided that given all of these variables, it was “increasingly clear” that the Chinese Vietnamese from China should be categorized as “Illegal Immigrants” and deported back, just like all other Chinese migrants who sought to evade authorities and sneak into Hong Kong. The UNHCR agreed. A few ECVII’s were able to win their asylum cases, but it was a small number. Between 1979 and 1987, Hong Kong repatriated over 13,000 Chinese Vietnamese back to China. A few dozen were allowed to remain because of family relations or asylum claims. ¹⁷

There is more of the story of the ECVIIs still to be excavated. In the 1980s and 1990s “ECVIIs” would continue to enter Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong government would sometimes deport them instantly and other times hold them in camps. Their presence in the archives attests to the precarity of citizenship for minority populations within newly independent nation-states and the overlapping experience of refugee-ness. In contrast to other minority populations that might have met the UN definition of statelessness, the Chinese Vietnamese in many ways became refugees because of their suspect citizenship, not because of an absence of citizenship. It also underlines the potential arbitrariness of these categories, since Chinese Vietnamese who landed directly in first asylum sites, including Hong Kong, in the 1970s and early 1980s were immediately classified as “refugees,” while those who arrived via China became “illegal immigrants.” In addition, their stories reveal the overlapping trajectories of minority populations and refugees. By the 1990s, many of these individuals became more formally stateless, because they would claim to hold ROC papers, so China (PRC) refused to accept them, and Vietnam and Taiwan also argued they did not recognize them as nationals. ¹⁸

One cannot imagine an individual ever self-identifying as an ECVII, an odd an appellation as one might find.

Finally, their stories show us how people tried to navigate and leverage this byzantine system. Caught in an exodus to China, many of these Chinese Vietnamese thought they would have a brighter future if they could prove they had fled straight from Vietnam and then resettle in the United States or Canada. Here we can see how men and women worked to manipulate categories. Rather than just echoing the immigration officials’ beliefs that they “lied,” we can trace how and why Chinese Vietnamese shaped stories in order to fit categories imposed on them. One cannot imagine an individual ever self-identifying as an ECVII, an odd an appellation as one might find. Instead, we see individuals rejecting this label, as well as Chinese and Vietnamese citizenship, and attempting to enter Hong Kong as “refugees” - presumably to eventually enter English-speaking resettlement countries on their own terms.