The last three decades of significant political, economic and social transformations in the People’s Republic of China have had a profound impact on the Chinese society. The article addresses selected topics of Chinese migration that give a more nuanced understanding of migration processes and their contextualization within the contemporary Chinese society: the internal migration, emigration from China and international immigration to China. Migration from rural area towards urban eastern coast is one of the largest spatial movements in the human history, as well as a key component of the economic rise and subsequent social change. Emigration from China has, despite its relatively small volume, profoundly transformed local places of origin, a process that is not independent from the current international geopolitical situation. Immigration of international migrants to China is a relatively new phenomenon that puts the country on the map of migration destination countries for the first time in sixty years. The author concludes that the prevalent research perspectives on Chinese migration offer only a limited insight and suggests some possible alternative ways of analyzing this phenomenon.
