The ‘walking route’: How an underground industry is helping migrants flee China for the US
TL:DR a bunch of western brainwormed Chinese citizens choose to expatriate into the U.S by taking treacherous routes through Latin America.
San Diego, California
They come with backpacks carrying a few spare changes of clothes and whatever money and phones they weren’t robbed of by criminals or cartels along the way, arriving at the United States-Mexico border exhausted from the stress of the journey north.
Like the hundreds of thousands of people around them who have also trekked weeks to reach the US, they’re driven by a desperation to escape and make a new life, despite the uncertainty of what’s on the other side.
But these migrants are fleeing the world’s second largest economy and an emerging superpower.
On a recent winter day, dozens of Chinese nationals waited in different makeshift camps scattered outside San Diego, California, just north of the Mexican border.
It gets a little funnier in a bit
Bundled in hoodies and jackets, they huddled around fires as they, and others there, counted the time before US border control agents would take them away for processing – and what they hoped would be the start to their lives in America.
These arrivals are part of a staggering new trend. In the first 11 months of 2023, more than 31,000 Chinese citizens were picked up by law enforcement crossing illegally into the US from Mexico, government data shows – compared with an average of roughly 1,500 per year over the preceding decade.
This whole propaganda article is only about a few thousand people while making it seem like it's millions. Talk about making mountains out of ant hills
Their numbers are still dwarfed by those from regional neighbors like Mexico, Venezuela, and Guatemala, and they are not alone in coming from other parts of the world. But the influx of people from China making that crossing spotlights the urgency many now feel to leave their native country, even in the midst of what leader Xi Jinping has claimed is a “national rejuvenation.”
As China squeaks ever so slightly closer towards socialism, more yankee-brained liberals, small business tyrants, religious cranks and few desperate disillusioned youths that think the grass is greener on the other side will flee to America and other western states.
Many who left point to a struggle to survive.
Three years of Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions left people across China out of work – and disillusioned with the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly tight grip on all aspects of life under Xi. Now, hope that business would fully rebound once restrictions ended a year ago has vanished, with China’s once envious economic growth stuttering.
Blah blah blah China's gonna collapse any day now
Others nod to restrictions on personal life in China, where Xi has overseen a sweeping crackdown on free speech, civil society and religion in the country of 1.4 billion.
<insert jab at America here>
“We are Christians,” one neatly dressed middle-aged man said simply when asked what had led him there – a bare encampment thousands of miles from home.
I wonder what kind
These Chinese nationals join migrants from around the world whose numbers have overwhelmed the southwestern US border with illegal crossings in recent months. Most are seeking asylum after they cross – a pathway that may narrow in the coming weeks as Congress is expected to move to stem that flow amid a fierce debate over immigration.
As if it already wasn't narrow as is.
For now, people from China are on track to be the fastest growing group making those crossings, according to a CNN analysis of the latest law enforcement data on border encounters.
Give it a few months and we'll see the talking heads moan about the Argentinan migrant crisis
And as the numbers making their escape have grown, so too has a network of businesses and social media accounts catering to Chinese migrants, who must often take a circuitous route across continents, before beginning the arduous, overland journey north.
The gateway
For many, that overland route begins in Quito, Ecuador – a city of roughly 2.5 million high in the Andean foothills that has become a gateway for those escaping China.
Lots of dangerous land to travel between Ecuador and southern U.S territories.
In 2022, Ecuador documented around 13,000 Chinese nationals entering. In the first 11 months of 2023, that number rose to more than 45,000. The country doesn’t require visas for Chinese passport holders
A cottage industry of businesses caters to the border-bound, starting with airport pickups to arranging stays at Chinese-run hostels and organizing the journey north – often for a hefty fee, CNN reporting has found.
Grifter networks abound
Evidence of the growing trend appears across Quito, if one knows where to look.
At one bus station, a ticket agent has a sign for “the Colombian border” printed in Chinese, ready to flash to potential customers. At a local hospital offering vaccinations – recommended for a treacherous jungle crossing – the Spanish-speaking nurse keeps a Chinese translation of the intake form on her desk.
Hella sketch. I'd fly back to China at this point.
Along the fringes of the city’s central business district are a growing number of businesses linked to the trend, travel agent Long Quanwei, who immigrated to Quito from China five years ago, told CNN last month.
At one of these hostels, where a night’s stay with meals costs about $20, printed Chinese-language maps and instructions pasted to a wall detail each leg of the trip. The owner, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of online backlash, estimates there are 100 such small businesses like hers that cater to Chinese travelers, including those preparing to head north.
“Many people come here and don’t speak English or Spanish, so they look for me,” she said.
You can read the rest if you're bored. It goes on about one of the more sympathetic stories of a rural worker who's had a real rough run of it in China and hates being exploited by his corporate overlords but thinks his life in America will be better. I don't think so, but best of luck dude. After that it's more propaganda bullshit. Save your braincells.
There’s plenty of people that immigrate legally from China to the U.S. without any southern border crossing shenanigans. This screams, we’ve got legal issues we’re circumventing via the asylum claim because we know the U.S. system is sympathetic to China Man Bad rhetoric.
Just do what all the other normies do and fly here for tourism and just stay.
On the bright side, hardcore Christians self-selecting to America means they won't be as easily used for color revolution like they seem to have been in '89
0.002% of the population of a country is fleeing! That country must really be bad and we were right about what we've been saying for years that they are gonna collapse soon because they're pushing the communism button and suppressing freedumb.
1500 per year increased to 30,000. What changed? What caused it?
Zheng, a high-school graduate from rural Yunnan province whose parents are migrant workers in China, recounted how life had become increasingly difficult for people like him, despite decades of rapid economic growth lifting large parts of the population out of poverty. I wish I was never born … living feels so exhausting.”
He started factory work mixing glue for shoe boxes in his late teens, and later switched between jobs, including at an assembly line making smartphone parts for Apple. During the pandemic, he was locked down in another factory fabricating internet routers, unable to leave. After the lockdown ended, Zheng switched to another job, where he says his wages were never paid, even after he filed a formal complaint.
“There is no way out … unless your parents are officials or businesspeople. But if you are from the lower-class, even if you get married and have children, you will still follow the old path … it’s painful just thinking about it,” he said. “I wish I was never born … living feels so exhausting.”
Earlier this year, like thousands of other Chinese, Zheng decided to try “zou xian” or taking the “walking route” to America.
The phrase has become a euphemism for the perilous journey, as has “global travels” – one of the search terms people can key in to find online tutorials in Chinese for how to prepare, what to do at each leg and even what to say to immigration officials.
Is this caused by propaganda? Someone deliberately spreading "zou xian" inside China and encouraging people to do it?
People's lives have not worsened overall which leads me to believe there must be other causes.
they are lumpen with otherwise no hope of class mobility looking to take advantage of the exchange rate, they live like shit in the US but can send a decent amount of money back
capital flight has been increasing due to FUD caused by lockdowns and current economic restructuring, lots of elite uncertainty bleeding down into the working class
i'd call it false consciousness but it's probably mostly just regular old social dynamics ala veblen paired with cpc inaction to address these issues
I don't think it's insignificant for something that was a constant rate in previous years.
The change has a cause. If that cause isn't economic then I can only guess that it's either memetic or there is a propaganda op intentionally pushing these people to do this.
Yeah I don't rule that out. But it'd be nice to know. An increase of several thousand percent in a single year obviously has some sort of cause.
They do this all the time. I see articles like this all the time because my country is one of the ones they pass through to get to the US. Have actually met some of them and they were unpleasant to be around.
Have actually met some of them and they were unpleasant to be around.
Yeah they're coming here, of course they're going to be scum.
There are Taiwanese that do this do but they are sometimes grouped into being part of the mainland Chinese doing this.
I’m confused. I read the article but I don’t see what facts are incorrect or even overblown.
Seems like a pretty run of the mill piece without much fluff.
A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink.
"I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.
"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."
The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."
Cool joke! That’s pretty funny.
I’m just curious why this article is being shared if you don’t want the info to spread.
So why is this being shared?
As far as I can see there’s no incorrect info in the article.
I’m not taking the piss out of you. I’m genuinely curious why this article is being shared.
They didn’t at all. But I’m sure there’s something of substance in the objection, right? Is it because OP doesn’t think it’s worthy of news?
Kinda. They felt we'd find the way CNN manages to use the data ".002% of a country experiencing the some of the fastest increases in living standards in living memory immigrated to the US last year" to tell a story about how awful conditions there are, entertaining.
Mocking the way "respectable" western media that distorts all of its reporting to support whatever war the state department is itching for is somewhat of a pastime here. The atomic unit of propaganda isn't lies, it's emphasis.
The scale of illegal border crossings is exaggerated, as are the conditions in China. It isn't worth pointing out individual instances, because basically every line of the article is doing one or the other. If it doesn't seem like that to you then with all due respect, you need to read the news more critically.
It’s exaggerated? They give direct numbers in the article. Who’s exaggerating?
I’m reading pretty critically here.
It seems the guy saying “I can’t give specifics but you should get the general idea” is the one with not much substance to share.
I am not writing a point by point dissection of that article just to ease your confusion.
I will only say that good propaganda is not lies, but information that cannot be disproven, presented in such a way as to give credence to a desired narrative.
It’s propaganda because it provides an honest account of what’s happening?
Or it’s propaganda because you don’t think it deserves to be reported on at all?
Honestly those are the only two scenarios I can glean out of your vague in-language laden replies.
Ok, now I'm sure you're full of shit.
Here, this link will explain everything you need to know.
Ah I see what's causing your confusion. No, I don't want to debate you. I only answered you at all because I thought you might actually be confused, and not be using mock ignorance as a lazy, duplicitous rhetorical tactic.
If you don't understand any of my "in-lingo" feel free to look it up in any english dictionary, I assure you they're regular words that mean the usual things. I see you do know what "narrative" means though so I assume you're also lying about not understanding my point about propaganda.
All people are saying is while the facts may be there they're being misleading about the importance of the story, and it's to propagate negative views about China. It's calling for people to look at and care about the minute fraction of extreme Chinese who want to leave for a life that we know will be worse. Meanwhile more than 90% of people in China are happy with their government, and the capitalist press never remarks that fact.
The statistics of Chinese visiting Ecuador rising from 2022 to 2023 is correct but they leave out the part where China was under lockdown for a significant portion of 2022 still. Those are factually correct statements, but presenting them in an article about Chinese immigrating to America implies the number of illegal immigrants have tripled, without presenting:
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Tourism to Ecuador has increased, and is roughly on par with pre COVID levels. They omitted pre 2020 data, presenting only 2022 and 2023 data. For some reason
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Most tourists to Ecuador return to China
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Most Chinese immigrating to America do so by flying
This article in and of itself seems to be intended to fuse the American sinophobia (that's been fomented over the last few years) with the American fear of migrant caravans and cartels.
This is propaganda because propaganda isn't necessarily false information, it's more often selective truths that aid in a specific narrative that's being pushed.
In this case: China's doing poorly, so poorly they're able to afford plane tickets halfway across the world to seek new opportunities in America, see? Biden's economy isn't that bad! Don't worry if you can't afford rent.
The unsourced portions of the article are telling: China's economy is stuttering (read: still rising, except not as fast as pre COVID predictions for where it would be in Q3 2023) as the source for "mass" emigration.
Why do you think it’s sowing Sinophobia? It reads far more anti-Mexican than anti-Chinese.
The Covid data is a glaring omission but doesn’t a few years of lowered immigration tell a much worse story than “this is getting bad now”? Saying this happened a ton before and is starting again paints a much more shitty picture of American border security and a much worse picture of China from an American perspective.
Why do you think it’s sowing Sinophobia?
"Dem illeeeeeegalssss" "go back home" is a common thing thrown at people in the country for perfectly legal reasons and any amount of focus on a specific ethnic group in media performing such crossings has the outcome of increasing ethnic tensions with that group.
I'm sorry but why the fuck would you think a communist would want that? We consistently align ourselves with the most vulnerable and least powerful people in the world. Why the fuck would you think I would want any working class person to be torn down? Not to mention the fact we don't fucking believe in borders mate. We want a borderless fucking world.
You really don't seem to understand us.
Yes, in a jar on my desk.
Do you have anything of importance to say?
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See where the rhetorical focus pans over to "the ruling Communist Party tightens its grips on all aspects of life" etc, etc, to make insinuations about how the new 1984 country is constantly becoming dramatically more 1984. Instead of really investigating why there would be a change, it's just "Xi grippie"
This thread should appear next to the encyclopedia entry for JAQing off.