It was not easy to get to India. Aside from the hassles thrown up by demonetisation, air tickets were not cheap and rupees were hard to come by.

Plus, the visa was expensive and a total hassle to obtain. But guess what. My Indian neighbours, who regularly visit India, breeze in and out of the country as so-called Persons of Indian Origin (PIO), a classification that allows them all kinds of privileges.

These include the right to have local Indian bank accounts, access to housing schemes and owning property, getting a job, education and, of course, easier entry to the country, including the absence of a visa requirement and separate immigration counters at all local airports.

In fact, PIO holders have almost as many rights as local Indians except for the right to hold public office or vote.

The other restrictions are pretty kacang puteh: they cannot own property in the disputed Jammu/Kashmir region and are required to seek government permission if they want to climb a mountain or become a missionary.

India allows PIOs because it wants to stay in touch with and not alienate its diaspora of educated, wealthy and capable people who left its hot and dusty confines to seek their fortunes and lives elsewhere.

In a 2012 survey by the Indian Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, there were some 30 million overseas Indians, with Malaysia’s three million-plus almost as plentiful as the four million-odd in the US. The UK has “only” 1.5 million overseas Indians.

In fact, in addition to PIOs, the Indian government also has its Overseas Citizenship of India (OCI) classification, presumably also intended to mitigate the

Indian diaspora, said to be among the largest in the world. It is a concept that gives India unique and valuable access to some of its best and brightest, many of whom have become CEOs at some of the world’s biggest companies.

Guys like Ajit Jain of Berkshire Hathaway Insurance, Ajay Banga of MasterCard, Rajesh Kapoor of Reckitt Benckiser, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo, Ivan Menezes of Diageo, Sundar Pichai of Google, Satya Nadella of Microsoft and Nikesh Arora of Softbank.

The reasons Indians make excellent CEOs and managers is, of course, a story for another day, but all this begs a question. Will China — which like India is another behemoth of a nation, facing problems with an ageing population and emigration of wealthy and skilful Chinese — do the same to amend its current policies?

Under China’s Nationality Law, the citizenship of those who gain foreign nationality is automatically revoked, which means they do not enjoy the same kind of access that India allows its émigrés.

However, there appear to have been some recent calls to relax these rules. According to South China Morning Post, entities like the Centre for China and Globalisation and individuals like Li Wei, a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Standing Committee, have suggested that China should allow dual citizenship for its ever-growing Chinese diaspora to “further the country’s reach”.

China, like India, has over a billion people and a soaring diaspora of its best and brightest.

But unlike India’s professional managers (albeit at the top level), China’s diaspora are serial entrepreneurs, building multibillion-dollar conglomerates the world over. There are way too many to mention, but suffice to say, in Malaysia alone, the Forbes Top 10 billionaires list is indicative of their business acumen.

Wouldn’t China benefit from the wealth of experience, knowledge, contacts and networks of overseas Chinese, especially as it further tastes globalisation?

This will become an interesting question for Chinese policymakers and certainly the overseas Chinese themselves, as the country makes further and deeper inroads into Southeast Asia, which has one of the biggest concentrations of the diaspora anywhere in the world.

It is not as if the overseas Chinese in the region have lost their roots completely. Like the overseas Indians in Malaysia, many still retain their culture, traditions, languages, idiosyncrasies and religions.

Indians who left the subcontinent as far back as four generations can obtain the PIO classification. So, on this basis, it would not be too late for China to offer its diaspora similar privileges.

The numbers are considerable. Studies in 2012 by the Chinese government suggest that there are well over 50 million overseas Chinese worldwide, which would outnumber the overseas Indian community.

And more intriguingly, Thailand (9.4 million), Malaysia (6.7 million) and the US (5 million) are the top three nations with the most overseas Chinese. So, will China make the move and extend the olive branch?

It was reported earlier this year that China’s President Xi Jinping had said, “no matter where the Chinese people are, China will always be their maternal home’’.

This was followed up by news reports that China plans to issue a “Chinese card” to all overseas-born Chinese and build an Overseas Chinese Township between Meizhou City and Songkou.

The proposed new town would lure millions of overseas Chinese — from Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, The Philippines, India, Mauritius and Vietnam — back to China to contribute to its development.

The news flow on this front has cooled, but what is indisputable is China’s pain at the millions of its rich and educated leaving for the US and other more developed and freer societies.

But there is another crucial distinction from India. Unlike my friends and neighbours, who have freely partaken of India’s PIO pass, China has a major PR exercise on its hands before it can enjoy such access to its accomplished overseas Chinese.

Thanks to its affinity for opacity and guardedness, there is a considerable level of distrust of China’s true intentions, especially with its aggressive brand of chequebook diplomacy in the region.

There is also the issue of uneven linkages. While the overseas Chinese profess to sharing linguistic and cultural bonds with the motherland, the bond does not extend to the kind that an overseas Indian might have with India itself.

Maybe to do business, yes, but to give up all that has been achieved in their new homes? And to forsake the pain and sacrifice of years of building and finally finding an equilibrium with the indigenous people who have been, by and large, generous in their acceptance of these strange, yellow people?

In turn, how will the Chinese government’s consideration of the rights and privileges of its overseas Chinese affect its own foreign and local policy, which has clear social and national security implications?

Like a Facebook profile, the issue gets more complicated the more layers of the onion are peeled. But, nonetheless, it is an interesting and necessary one, given the speed at which the world is changing these days.

Khoo Hsu Chuang is contributing editor at The Edge Malaysia

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