Running from China: China’s youth dream of leaving
Running from China: China’s youth dream
of leaving
WRITTEN BY DR FRANZISKA PLÜMMER
5 September 2023
In recent months, reports about ‘refugees’ from China have made headlines. Chinese citizens, who were frustrated and desperate after having suffered three years of strict zero-COVID measures, had decided to flee the country and apply for asylum in the US, Canada, or Australia. The stories of these ‘refugees’ travelling through Latin America are remarkable and illustrate the dire social impact of China’s pandemic management. At this point, however, this does not seem to constitute a new phase of Chinese emigration. Since Xi Jinping took office in 2012, the number of Chinese citizens applying for asylum abroad has continuously stayed at a little over 15,000 per year. This year, both UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration have so far reported similar numbers.
Still, although the number of people leaving has remained the same, they are taking new routes. The communities deciding to leave China are also different. In the past, it was mostly human rights activists and religious practitioners who fled the country — now, leavers are not necessarily considered ‘political’. Spurred by recently introduced exit bans in China, there is increasing pressure on both citizens and foreigners who consider leaving China. The frustrations leading up to the recent emigration movements created a social media trend known as “run-ology”.
“Run-ology”
The frustration of the Chinese public over the government’s zero-COVID policy took many forms. The so-called White Paper Protests of November 2022, during which thousands of people went to the streets all over the country, showed how desperate people were after three years of zero-COVID measures (e.g. lockdowns, travel restrictions, and new forms of social control). Many people got angry with both central and local governments and saw their individual life plans ruined.
The risks of brain drain and demographic change are looming over the heads of Beijing’s policymakers and business leaders, who are also increasingly incentivising Chinese students to come back from abroad.
The frustration was strong because it connected to an already existing generational feeling that putting in the effort to build a good life for yourself is a futile endeavour. Chinese citizens under 40 have experienced many kinds of frustrations over the past decades that are related to their personal and work lives. The pressure of getting married often meets the inability to afford housing together. The family might expect you to study hard at university but there is either no or only a low-paying job waiting at the end. There is a toxic work culture in many offices, and long working hours leave no time for family or friends. Women, in particular, feel pressured because traditional Chinese society discriminates against them for ageing. They are expected to build a family sooner than their male peers, to get married before 30 (or at least 35), and to bear (more) children now that the three-child policy is in effect.
Besides protests in the streets, young people especially expressed their frustrations online. They started writing about escaping from the harsh lockdown realities and dreaming of better lives abroad. Way before the Western public talked about “quiet quitting”, peoples’ grievances found their way into social media trends as going on internal strike, as “involution” (neijuan 内卷), and as “lying flat” (tangping 躺平). After such ‘mental escapes’ did not prove sufficient, the idea of physical escape made the headlines on social media. With the additional pressure of zero-COVID lockdown rules, Chinese netizens started talking about escaping the pressure of life, ultimately resulting in a collection of resources on how to run away from China known as “run-ology” (runxue 润学).
In early 2022, WeChat searches for emigration and conditions for moving to Canada skyrocketed, and demand for immigration consultations peaked. While the term suggests that people might illegally escape from China, most posts concern legal ways of emigrating to dream destinations such as Canada or Australia. However, some groups such as “United States DIY” also shared recommendations on how to travel to the US through Latin America to apply for asylum there. People who have taken this route mostly left China on legal terms, with an existing passport, pretending to travel to Southeast Asia, but changed their destination once they had left the country. Reports from the International Organization for Migration show that the number of Chinese citizens taking the route through Colombia and Panama has increased to almost one thousand per month in early 2023. The online forums are no longer accessible, having attracted too much public attention to avoid censorship. Like the online information itself, the phenomenon is likely to dissipate. With the end of the lockdown restrictions, the urgency to leave has also waned for the moment.
Government responses
Meanwhile, the government is anything but thrilled that young and highly educated people (talk of) leaving the country. The risks of brain drain and demographic change are looming over the heads of Beijing’s policymakers and business leaders, who are also increasingly incentivising Chinese students to come back from abroad. Accordingly, it is manifesting an anti-emigration discourse. The central government tries to keep the educated workforce in the country and to remigrate the Chinese diaspora from around the world. In a speech in September 2022, Chinese President Xi Jinping highlighted how important cultivating, importing, and utilising talent is in China’s new era: “never in history has China been closer to the goal of national rejuvenation and never in history has it been in greater need of talented people”. Despite these appraisals of China’s talented young generation, the government also uses less subtle strategies to stop people from emigrating. It has become increasingly difficult to get a new passport issued; the administration is working slowly, denying passport renewals or birth and marriage certificate notarisation. While this was always difficult to manage, many people now suspect systematic delay as part of the anti-emigration strategy.
Additionally, several new laws increased the insecurity of people wanting to leave the country. Among them, the 2023 Anti-Espionage Law entails a vaguely formulated exit ban for all persons suspected of espionage, which not only scares Chinese activists but feeds foreigners’ insecurities about entering the country. People with dual citizenship have been increasingly targeted, but foreign journalists and businesspeople have also more frequently been questioned by police or found themselves submitted to exit bans upon trying to leave the country. A report by Safeguard Defenders published in May 2023 states that the government employs exit bans to “punish human rights defenders and their families, hold people hostage to force targets overseas to come back to China (a practice called persuade and return), control ethnic-religious groups, engage in hostage diplomacy, and intimidate foreign journalists”. As such, exit bans are broad in scope and produce enormous insecurities among possible target groups, ultimately making them a powerful policing tool. The Chinese government has been criticised for issuing these bans (and implementing them in various laws) — not only by human rights groups but also by foreign business groups that rightfully fear that the measures will harm China’s push to attract foreign talent and investment.
No way out
In sum, media reports about a new phase of Chinese refugee migration are exaggerated. However, we should continue to investigate what motivates these migrants to leave the country. The strict zero-COVID measures have been discontinued, ending the bulk of grievances that initially made people run. However, high youth unemployment rates and few job perspectives do remain. The Chinese government must attend to the younger generation and design more comprehensive and inclusive social policy — not just by keeping them from leaving, but also by offering new prospects.
Finally, it is important to reflect on social inequalities in the debate about people leaving their home country. There are inequalities in the ways that people are forced to leave the country, in the financial means that they have in travelling and building new homes for themselves, and in the urgency of their situation. Factory and migrant workers — and/or those who do not have hukou privileges — are not part of this debate. The majority of these Chinese people endure the most difficult living and working conditions and do not own passports. Accordingly, they do not have the opportunity to leave. For them, the only way to improve their lives is by getting involved in strike action, which is what they did in many cities and villages across the country. We should keep them in mind as well.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Franziska Plümmer works as an Assistant Professor of Europe-China Relations at the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Before joining the department in 2022, she worked at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law & International Law, at the Universities of Vienna and Tübingen. Her work on the Chinese border regime has been published by Amsterdam University Press. Other research on Chinese security practices has been published with Security Dialogue and China Information. Her research interests generally lie within Critical Security Studies with a focus on borders, mobility, and migration governance in China, East Asia, and Europe, EU technology politics, questions of (digital) sovereignty, and the role of Chinese enterprises in developing ‘critical’ infrastructures in Europe. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons/severin.stalder.