The article describes the types of migration - permanent and temporary, legal - illegal, voluntary and forced, economic and social cultural, etc. The purpose of the article is to analyze the most common economically motivated type of migration. The historical and dynamic methods allowed to systematize the available data on Chinese migration as factual material, to determine the evolution of migration processes in China. Using of official statistics is extremely important in order to make a structured analysis and assessment of flows based on it, in particular, legal and unregulated labor and trade migration.