BARCELONA, July 13 (Xinhua) -- Expectations for Spain's so-called "Golden Visa" were once very high and it turned out that it is less well received by Chinese citizens, according to a seminar on Chinese migrants in Spain.
Spain launched the "Golden Visa" law in 2015, granting non-EU citizens Spanish residency who make investment in Spain's real estate or public debt spheres.
A seminar held on Thursday at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, or UAB, aimed at analyzing the dynamics and the situation of Chinese immigrants in Spain.
According to figures obtained by panelists at the seminar, the number of Chinese who have come to Spain with the "Golden Visa" is only a few thousand.
Nevertheless, the number of Chinese immigrants in Spain grew spectacularly in the last 10 years. In 2006 there were 100,000 Chinese with a residence permit and in 2016 the figure reached 203,000.
The Chinese are a very young community, with 25 percent of the population aged under 15, said Joaquin Beltran, a researcher in the Department of Translation and Interpretation and East Asian Studies at UAB.
He stressed that different groups can be identified among all of the Chinese migrants. The elite promotes large investments in Spain. Those working in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the majority and they interact more with the Spanish society as they work in the services sector.
Most people believe that the Chinese are very hardworking and they attach a lot of importance to family and education which "are the values that the Chinese still have," he told Xinhua.
According to Minkang Zhou, coordinator of a research project on China at the UAB, the majority of Chinese students come to do masters in the area of humanities as well as in the area of science and technology.
Zhou called for more information sharing and training by governments at different levels so that immigrants could live within the Spanish society with better cultural, legal and language knowledge, among others.
