Tuesday, June 03, 2008

China Rising

The Ministry of Law* has released its figures on the number of foreigners residing in Japan in 2007.

2,152,973 - non-Japanese citizen residents in 2007

a new record, up 3.3% over 2006

606,899 - the number of Chinese

28.2% of the total, up 3.0% over 2006

[Hmmm....odd. From anecdotal observations, I would have guessed that the growth in the number of Chinese residents would be higher than the average.]

2007 marks first year that Chinese hold the top spot in the table

Top prefectures in terms in terms of foreign residents:

1) Tokyo, with 382,000 foreign residents

17.8% of the national total

2) Aichi
3) Osaka

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* Let us stop referring to it as a Ministry of Justice.
Let us call it what the original Japanese says it is.

4 comments:

Jan Moren said...

Don't see where you got that 3.0% increase form those news notices? Is there a link to the original report?

MTC said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
MTC said...

Herr Morén -

I looked up the 2006 figures on the Hōmushō home page.

http://www.moj.go.jp/NYUKAN/nyukan68-5.pdf

However, I am not confident about the commensurability of the figures in last year's report and those appearing in the press. The differences in between the spouse/child (haigūsha) figures for 2006 and those quoted in the news reports for 2007 are too huge.

We will in the dark somewhat until the Hōmushō posts its report on its website--whenever that will be.

Jan Moren said...

The Asahi Shimbun gives the increase of Chinese residents to be 46000 people, which would mean the increase is about 8%, not 3%.

Could it be they meant that the percentage point increase of the percentage of the total is 3.0%? That the proportion of Chinese residents was 25.2% last year, and increased to 28.2% this year? That's a distressingly common error in the general news and would fit pretty well with the 8% increase in population.