Refugee Data and Emigrant Crisis in 1964

Mass Missing Emigrants in 1964

When I dealt with the world migration data, I noticed a very unusual phenomena around 1964. Here is the graph about the sum of migrants in the world in each year. Migrant numbers are calculated as (Immigrant Numbers) - (Emigrants Numbers). So, the sum of the all countries migrant numbers should be close to zero because a emigrant normally goes to another country and he is counted as an immigrant.

However, there are some exceptions. For example, if a person does not get a proper visa to live in a new country or he just continue traveling in several countries, maybe he is counted as an emigrant in his home country, but not counted as an immigrant in the destination country. Also, some people just keep their registration in his home country, even if he stays in another country with a special condition such as dual citizenship (no need to apply for the long term visa) etc.

So, there are such few exceptions, but normally, the sum of the migrants in the world should be close to zero. This principle is roughly valid in most years. However, there are two obvious irregular points in 1964 (mass emigration) and in 1967 (mass immigration). It seems that more than 1 million people suddenly disappeared around 1964, and then such missing people came back to the world (or in the statistics) around 1967.

Here are the sum of migrants in the world from 1963 to 1972. There are obvious down jump in 1964 and almost the same numbers of people came back to the world around 1967.

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1963 248545.0

1964 -1248292.0

1965 -176802.0 1966 26490.0

1967 1273808.0

1968 -232311.0

1969 -247787.0

1970 -240048.0

1971 -89294.0

1972 -50507.0

This is a table about the top countries who lost population in 1964. The top 10 countries are in China, Philippines, Russia, India, Portugal, Algeria, South Korea, Japan and Angola. However, China has exceptionally the largest number compared to other countries. The countries are somehow similar to the ones which cooperated with the Jesuit naval imperialism. However, the biggest number came from China, but not from Portugal.

The Maoism revolution happened since 1966. So, perhaps, it could be related to the preparation of the great purge by Mao. In addition, there was an assassination of Kennedy in 1963. Kennedy launched the spy satellite with Khrushchev in Soviet. And Chinese communists criticized Khrushchev as a revival of imperialism. In any case, this phenomenon happened in the context of the Cold War.

name	Country Code	1964
China	CHN	-1250441.0
Philippines	PHL	-156342.0
Russia	RUS	-148595.0
India	IND	-141916.0
Portugal	PRT	-118763.0
Algeria	DZA	-108798.0
South Korea	KOR	-102284.0
Japan	JPN	-100696.0
Angola	AGO	-79977.0
Greece	GRC	-76678.0
Mexico	MEX	-72581.0
Turkey	TUR	-69978.0
Pakistan	PAK	-63298.0
Tunisia	TUN	-59602.0
Romania	ROU	-59500.0
Colombia	COL	-53972.0
Morocco	MAR	-46106.0
Cuba	CUB	-44406.0
Ghana	GHA	-43480.0
Spain	ESP	-41461.0

This is the map of the top 20 countries which lost the population in 1964.

The next map is about the immigrants in 1967 (who came back to the world). Many people came back to China, but at the same time, some of them may moved to US, Canada, Australia (Anglo-Saxon countries), Kazakhstan (the hub of the Soviet Spaceship Project - Spy Satellite), Iran and Jordan.

In any case, this kind of political immigrants are often counted as "refugees", so, let's check the refugee data by UNHCR.

World Refugee Data by UNHCR

There are two types of refugee data published by UNHCR. The one is based on the origin of the refugees, and the other is based on the country which accepted the refugees. The oldest data is in 1960, however, there were only a few countries which had/ accepted refugees at that time.

Data Source: Refugee population by country or territory of asylum | Data, Refugee population by country or territory of origin | Data

The following table is about the refugee population based on the their origin in 1960 -1968. The first country which had refugees was Angola (a central African country in the west coast). Angola is the closest country to St. Helena and Ascension islands (the spy hub of Echelon = CENTCOM). The island had been used as a spy satellite hub during WWII, and it was destroyed once. However, seemingly UNHCR started their business to help such spy pirates in 1960.

Country Name	1960	1961	1962	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968
China	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN	1200000.0	1330000.0	1326810.0	74000.0	70000.0
Angola	150000.0	150000.0	170000.0	175000.0	200000.0	220000.0	303800.0	356200.0	381360.0
Rwanda	NaN	147000.0	147000.0	154000.0	166300.0	155900.0	159600.0	160230.0	160100.0
Sudan	NaN	NaN	NaN	13000.0	20300.0	81560.0	115000.0	120990.0	175500.0
Guinea-Bissau	NaN	NaN	NaN	6000.0	30000.0	50000.0	61050.0	59520.0	56740.0

In the first 5 years (1960 - 1964), UNHCR mostly helped the refugees (maybe the remains of war criminals who worked in the imperial navy). And then, suddenly there were 1200000 refugees appeared in 1964. It accords with the migrant data by World Bank. And the Chinese refugees increased until 1966, however, the number suddenly decreased to 74000 in 1967. To assume their destination, let's check the statistics about recipient countries.

The table below is the refugee data based on the territory of asylum (=the countries which received the refugees)in 1960-1963. It is sorted by the values of 1960.

You can easily find the origin of the "Palestine" refugees here, especially in Jordan and West Bank/ Gaza. Also, there are two major issues in this data. First, the refugee acceptance numbers in 1960 is much bigger than the refugee numbers in the data based on their origin. I mean that in the first table, only Angola (as the origin of the refugees) has refugees (150000), however, the following table shows other kind of refugees which amount to 2641151. So, there is a obvious gap (about 2500000). In 1960, positive numbers were found only in 23 countries (until Tunisia in the table below). Assumingly, these people are the war criminals of WWII who were purged by the post war liberals.

The second issue is that US, France, Germany (maybe only "West" Germany), UK, Belgium, Canada, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, Greece, Italy, Netherland kind of western countries accepted such refugees a lot. However, the countries under military regime (Spain and Portugal) did not accept them. Of course, none of Soviet states accepted them. So, it is likely that the countries which accepted the "refugees" were on the side of the war criminals.

Country Name	Country Code	1960	1961	1962	1963
Jordan	JOR	623660.0	633197.0	644940.0	662525.0
United States	USA	500000.0	500000.0	500000.0	500000.0
West Bank and Gaza	PSE	258165.0	265430.0	273038.0	283782.0
France	FRA	245935.0	253375.0	259740.0	174057.0
Germany	DEU	197000.0	190000.0	185000.0	182000.0
United Kingdom	GBR	167000.0	164000.0	160000.0	157000.0
Congo, Dem. Rep.	COD	150000.0	203000.0	223000.0	237000.0
Lebanon	LBN	137884.0	142670.0	146969.0	152747.0
Syrian Arab Republic	SYR	116778.0	120577.0	124626.0	129010.0
Belgium	BEL	55000.0	53000.0	51000.0	50000.0
Canada	CAN	48629.0	44492.0	12282.0	10946.0
Austria	AUT	39000.0	34000.0	30000.0	27000.0
Sweden	SWE	26000.0	26000.0	26000.0	26000.0
Switzerland	CHE	20000.0	20000.0	20000.0	20000.0
Greece	GRC	15500.0	15200.0	15700.0	15400.0
Italy	ITA	15500.0	14500.0	14300.0	14600.0
Netherlands	NLD	12000.0	10000.0	10000.0	9500.0
Norway	NOR	3000.0	3000.0	3000.0	3000.0
Morocco	MAR	2700.0	2900.0	2900.0	3200.0
Denmark	DNK	2300.0	2200.0	2200.0	2200.0
Turkiye	TUR	2200.0	2300.0	2300.0	2300.0
Luxembourg	LUX	1900.0	1900.0	1900.0	1900.0
Tunisia	TUN	1000.0	1000.0	1000.0	1000.0
Hong Kong SAR, China	HKG	NaN	NaN	NaN	NaN

Destination of the Missing Chinese Refugees

In any case, let's back to the missing Chinese refugees in 1964. The next table is about the top refugee recipient countries (sorted by the value of 1966).

df_rec = df_rec.sort_values(by = "1966", ascending = False)

df_rec[["Country Name", "Country Code", "1963", "1964", "1965", "1966", "1967", "1968"]].head(30)

You can easily find that the missing 120000+ were likely to have moved to Hong Kong and Macao. At that time, Hong Kong and Macao were still functioned as the penal colonies of Jesuits or British colonists, and they were segregated by the mainland China. And then, the 1200000+ people suddenly disappeared in 1967. Perhaps, such people were killed during the Maoism revolution because the total refugee numbers in the world dramatically decreased between 1966-1967. (the line chart below)

Country Name	Country Code	1963	1964	1965	1966	1967	1968
Hong Kong SAR, China	HKG	0.0	1120000.0	1251200.0	1250040.0	0.0	0.0
Jordan	JOR	662525.0	678985.0	697658.0	714763.0	668453.0	478369.0
United States	USA	500000.0	500000.0	510000.0	500000.0	480000.0	498000.0
Congo, Dem. Rep.	COD	237000.0	236000.0	265000.0	357100.0	434100.0	475400.0
West Bank and Gaza	PSE	283782.0	293024.0	301879.0	311846.0	295040.0	576889.0
France	FRA	174057.0	175861.0	177665.0	179468.0	177200.0	176736.0
United Kingdom	GBR	157000.0	160000.0	170000.0	167000.0	164000.0	161000.0
Lebanon	LBN	152747.0	158584.0	163069.0	164692.0	122967.0	173437.0
Uganda	UGA	59000.0	113000.0	137400.0	156000.0	162760.0	175730.0
Syrian Arab Republic	SYR	129010.0	133366.0	138081.0	142206.0	127304.0	151730.0
Germany	DEU	182000.0	180000.0	180000.0	140000.0	112000.0	110000.0
Burundi	BDI	34000.0	78000.0	65000.0	79000.0	79000.0	72200.0
Macao SAR, China	MAC	0.0	80000.0	80000.0	73770.0	74000.0	70000.0
Senegal	SEN	6000.0	30000.0	50000.0	61400.0	59870.0	57210.0
India	IND	0.0	44000.0	45000.0	45000.0	50000.0	55000.0
Central African Republic	CAF	0.0	3300.0	20560.0	43000.0	35000.0	23000.0
Australia	AUS	0.0	0.0	40000.0	40000.0	44000.0	43000.0
Belgium	BEL	50000.0	47000.0	47000.0	40000.0	34000.0	33000.0
Tanzania	TZA	12000.0	25000.0	29000.0	33950.0	39800.0	46000.0
Serbia	SRB	0.0	0.0	25820.0	26100.0	26210.0	26270.0

Also, there are possibilities that some of such Chinese refugees exiled to countries which has bigger number in 1967 than 1966. Here is the list of the countries which experienced the increase of refugees during 1966-1967. It is quite similar to the first mission of CENTCOM (around Sudan).

Countries with Bigger Refugee Numbers in 1967 than 1966

Country Name	Country Code	gap btw 1966-1967
Congo, Dem. Rep.	COD	77000.0
Sudan	SDN	33000.0
Uganda	UGA	6760.0
Tanzania	TZA	5850.0
India	IND	5000.0
Zambia	ZMB	4420.0
Australia	AUS	4000.0
Cambodia	KHM	3000.0
New Zealand	NZL	3000.0
Spain	ESP	3000.0
Morocco	MAR	820.0
Switzerland	CHE	500.0
Macao SAR, China	MAC	230.0
Nepal	NPL	180.0
Serbia	SRB	110.0

Global Sum of Refugee Numbers since 1960

This is the line chart about global sum of refugee numbers since 1960. The numbers of refugees (mostly related to the past war criminals) accepted in all countries became 37.57 million in 2023. Roughly speaking, it became 14 times bigger than that in 1960.

Also, there was an obvious decline of the refugee acceptance around 1991, the year of the fall of Soviet. It implies that some of such war criminal refugees found places to live normally, without refugee states. However, the world restarted to reject them since around 2013 (Arab Spring or Syrian War). And the number of refugees (related to war criminals of WWII or Jesuits), resumed to increase.

It has become a very long article. Next time, I will analyze the detail of the mobility of the refugees in each decades.