Chinese actress Yao Chen visits a refugee camp in Ethiopia as an Honorary Patron for UNHCR on April 14, 2012. Photo: CFP

Each month, Taonga's* mother goes to an airport in Zimbabwe and waits for hours for a perfect stranger. She is looking for a trustworthy person who is about to fly to Beijing to bring $100 in cash to her son. As for what her son is doing in China, that is a secret she can never tell.

In fact, her 28-year-old son Taonga was registered as a refugee in China in June, right before a new law that gives foreign refugees the right to stay in the country came into force.

Facing discrimination and threats for being homosexual, Taonga fled to China alone in April 2012 and filed an asylum claim with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)'s office in Beijing.

Taonga told the Global Times that Beijing feels like home. But with no permission to work in the country and relying heavily on financial support from his mother, he said he does not know what the future holds.

"I can't plan my future, I can't go home and I can't work, I feel like I don't have a life here," he said.

China is a party to two international refugee pacts - the 1951 Convention and the 1967 Protocol. Before the new "Exit and Entry" law was approved by the National People's Congress in June 2012, asylum seekers were often treated as illegal foreign residents because China had no legislative means to distinguish refugees from regular foreigners.

Now there are some 276 refugees and 1,253 asylum seekers living in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macao, as well as 300,895 Vietnamese refugees who arrived in the late 1970s and are now integrated into Chinese society, according to the UNHCR.

Surge in displacement

In the first six months of 2013, about 5.9 million people around the world were forced to flee their homes, compared with 7.6 million for all of 2012, according to the UNHCR's report, which describes the first half of 2013 as "one of the worst periods for forced displacement in decades."

The biggest producer of new displacement was Syria. Lebanon is now home to the largest number of Syrian refugees in the region, with about 840,000 Syrians either registered as refugees or awaiting registration, according to UNHCR. So far, there is only one Syrian registered as a refugee in China.

So why China? For Taonga, the answer was love. Taonga came to China for the first time in 2009 when he attended an event related to Zimbabwe and met his Chinese boyfriend. A year later, Taonga introduced him to his family back in Zimbabwe. His family adored him. But just when he thought everything went well, his homosexual identity somehow got exposed.

In a country where homosexuality is illegal and politicians call them the "festering finger," Taonga faced the very real possibility of being thrown into jail.

He and his family became the target of a hate campaign. Soon they were kicked out of their church. Many of his friends stopped talking to him and he was attacked by strangers. Knowing he had to leave, he came to China on a tourist visa and stayed until it expired.

As there is no national legislation for refugees in China, it is the UNHCR that is responsible for screening the status of asylum seekers and identifying durable solutions for refugees. China is not alone in this regard. Several Asian countries have also given the responsibility to the UNHCR, which also provides limited financial assistance that covers basic needs such as food and medical care.

Even though China does not have a refugee status determination procedure currently, it will eventually have to tackle the issue itself, said Alexander Casella, a former director for Asia at the UNHCR, in an op-ed piece published in the Global Times earlier.

"As the country develops, it will unavoidably become a destination for migrants-cum-asylum seekers. Once that junction is reached, China will need its own refugee status determination procedure," Casella said.

The UNHCR office was set up in 1980 and has helped to settle thousands of Indo-Chinese refugees who fled to China during the Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts in 1970s into Chinese society. Now the UNHCR office receives an average of 250 applications from asylum seekers every year from about 29 countries. Twenty of them are from African countries with the majority from Somalia, according to Francis Teoh, senior regional protection officer of UNHCR.

"China is very active in terms of their trade with Africa," Teoh told the Global Times. "It is an economic giant, so maybe there is a possibility others might seek asylum in China."

However, he said there has not been much change in terms of number of applications since the new law came into force in July.

Gary Chodorow, an American immigration lawyer in China, told the Global Times that the new law sends out a positive signal, but enforcement could be improved.

"If China is going to take this obligation under international law and domestic law, there should be national regulation by the State Council or national-level ministries to perform their duties," Chodorow said.

"If the national law said you can apply, and then people are not given any way to apply, then the law is meaningless," he continued.

The UNHCR is partnered with China's Ministry of Civil Affairs, the Ministry of Public Security and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the issues of foreign refugees. It sees China's new move as a good sign.

"UNHCR believes that the growing interest of Chinese authorities in the asylum models abroad can be a good sign that more specific regulations can be adopted in the near future," said a UNHCR regional representative.
Restrictions in place

However, China does not open its arms to foreign refugees without restrictions. Foreign refugees are not allowed to work, open a bank account or receive higher education, and need approval to travel.

Taonga said once he wanted to travel to Sichuan Province to attend a Chinese friend's wedding, but was told it would be better to stay in Beijing as local authorities might have a problem with his refugee identity.

"It keeps happening that I don't feel like I have a life here at all," he said.

As there are no refugee camps in China, Taonga stays with a friend in a suburb of Beijing. Many other refugees have moved out of the city as the rent is cheaper, but Taonga has to stay so that the stranger with his $100 can reach him easily.

Like many other refugees, he is waiting to be resettled in a host country like the United States or Canada, which could take years to materialize. In 2012, the UNHCR's China office submitted 40 resettlements to a third country, 25 of which were accepted. The US tops the list, followed by France and Sweden.

In November 2012, foreign refugees in China saw a breakthrough in terms of refugees' children's access to education. Five provinces, including Hebei and Guangdong, decided to allow refugees' children to go to primary school for free. It was the first time schools in China accepted foreign refugees as students.

Sammy*, 13, who was born in the Pakistani city of Lahore, fled to China with his mother and three siblings in 2010 after an attack on local mosques due to their religious beliefs. The family filed an asylum claim with the UNHCR's office and were registered as refugees.

Before that, he received home tuition from volunteers arranged by the UNHCR. Karoline Kan, 24, is one of them. For two months she went to their place and taught them Chinese and English twice a week until the family moved away from Beijing.

"They are very polite and nice people, they always showed appreciation for my help," Kan told the Global Times.

Despite being 13, Sammy is enrolled in a grade-3 class where most of his peers are 8. He said his favorite class is English. The rest of the classes are taught in Chinese, which he has a problem understanding and reading.

"My classmates are nice but we don't talk much. I sit by myself for eight hours every day. It's very lonely," he was quoted by UNHCR as saying.

Taonga is not that lucky. With a degree in fine art, he sees no chance of receiving higher education in China, let alone working as a foreign teacher.

Raising awareness

For years the UNHCR has been working to raise public awareness of refugee issues. In April, Chinese actress Yao Chen, known as the "Queen of Weibo," made her first visit to Ethiopia. The event was held to hail the courage of Somali refugees and the generosity of their hosts in Ethiopia.

Inspired by her talks with the refugees, she was quoted by UNHCR as saying, "My trips make me reconsider my life, my values, and they change me as a person. I feel I have to do something for refugees, I feel it as my responsibility now."

Teoh said he has seen a positive change in attitudes toward foreign refugees in China.

"I think it is changing positively, China is contributing to UNHCR activities in Turkey to help the Syrian refugees. We hope China can contribute more and play a greater role," he said.

*Names have been changed for protection reasons