Thirty-six-year-old Chen Wang, from southeastern China, said he decided to come to the U.S. in late 2021 after he posted comments critical of the ruling party on Twitter. He was admonished by local police and feared that he could be imprisoned.

More than two years later, he is still unemployed and lives in a tent in the woods that he has made into a home. Chen described his fellow Chinese on the journey as simply people “chasing a better life.”

Big oof there buddy. Came to the wrong place.

    • hello_hello [they/them, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 months ago

      Wang, who traveled several weeks from Wuhan, China, to Ecuador, to the southern U.S. border, said the idea that Chinese migrants were building a military “does not exist” among immigrants he has met.

      “We came here to make money,” he said.

      I don't know his exact situation, but I'd rather take a jail sentence and forced labor in China rather than go from ecuador to the US-Mexican border.

      That's just considering the red scare scenario. It seems to me he thought he would strike it rich with american dollars and abandoned his home country and this government sedition thing is just some candy for american libs to chew on.

      • Bartsbigbugbag@lemmy.ml
        hexagon
        ·
        edit-2
        2 months ago

        Some people really believe their own kool-aid. One of my good Chinese buddies always calls himself a slave in a feudal state. Dude owns his own house fully, has a wife and three kids, has land that he plants food on, makes frequent trips into the city to have fun with friends, has a new gaming laptop every year. He works hard, for sure. But he has so many privileges that it hurts to see how down he is on his life. He is basically living “the American dream” already. And like Carlin said, it’s called a dream because you’d have to be asleep to believe it. Sometimes he brings up these migrants as if they’d only come here if they could succeed here. I don’t want to show him this article because it’s just too much for him to handle and I know he’d go off on a rant about China again.