ABSTRACT

As China aspires to become a quasi-superpower, the parameters of its “core national interests” and related national-security concerns have expanded. As late as the early 1990s, the major security preoccupation of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) administration was ensuring territorial integrity, and its core interests did not go much beyond Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet and Xinjiang. After the turn of the century, however, Beijing’s national security and “core interests” have increased to cover a plethora of factors that are deemed prerequisites for the country’s development into a superpower in the coming few decades. They range from oil and gas supplies to human resources. It is in this context that this study will evaluate the impact that the ongoing wave of elite emigration – mostly to Western countries – is having on Beijing’s national-security calculations.