Why Are More Chinese Migrants Arriving at the U.S. Southern Border?

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: A rise in Chinese emigration through the U.S. southern border draws ire from right-wing commentators, state media outlets briefly go dark on Chinese President Xi Jinping’s trip to Europe, and TikTok sues the U.S. government after it passes a divest-or-ban law.

Chinese Arrivals to U.S. Southern Border Rise

In an interview last month, former U.S. President Donald Trump said Chinese nationals arriving in the United States from its southern border were “probably building an army,” echoing language common among the U.S. right wing. Right-wing commentators have suggested that the increase in Chinese arrivals and asylum-seekers is a planned infiltration of “military-aged men” or spies.

This is fearmongering. Espionage depends on access, which Chinese graduates and tech workers have and asylum-seekers do not. Furthermore, migrants around the world tend to be younger men, especially those taking a physically grueling route such as the risky Darién Gap, which stretches across Columbia and Panama.

Yet the rise in Chinese migrants coming through the Darién Gap is a good example of how China’s large population means that even small shifts can have big impacts. Around 37,000 Chinese nationals were detained at the U.S.-Mexico border last year—around the same number of people as in a single large Beijing housing compound.

Other migrants may have evaded detection, but the data suggests that most Chinese arrivals seek to make affirmative asylum claims, immediately reporting to the authorities. Those numbers have grown exponentially, increasing nearly 10 times since 2022. So, what’s going on? There is no great Chinese exodus, but a few changes have made the Darién Gap route more attractive to migrants from China.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese emigration grew overall, rising from an average of 190,000 annual departures in the 2010s to 310,000 in 2021 and 2022. Leaving China is a tricky business, especially for ethnic minorities and persecuted groups. Chinese emigration figures are still low per capita. But the strong U.S. economic recovery from the pandemic makes the United States a more attractive destination for some Chinese migrants, especially low-wage workers.

China’s own weak recovery, combined with the damage of COVID-19 lockdowns, has also pushed outliers to take the risky route through the Darién Gap, such as once successful small-business owners. University graduates are showing up at the southern border for the first time amid limited prospects back home. Conversations I’ve had with Chinese American volunteers suggest that many of these arrivals are first-generation graduates from rural backgrounds.

The increase in Chinese arrivals is also a response to U.S. politics. During the pandemic, U.S. business and tourist visas became harder for Chinese citizens to obtain. But aided by U.S.-China tensions and growing human rights abuses under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the acceptance rate for Chinese asylum claims is a relatively high 55 percent. (Chinese Christians remain one of the few refugee groups with strong bipartisan support.)

That also in part explains why Chinese migrants are keen to echo anti-Chinese Communist Party (CCP) narratives and carry Bibles and crosses. There is no doubt that there is some real feeling behind chants to “knock the CCP down!” among migrant groups, as well as many migrants with genuine Christian faith, but there is also an awareness of what narratives will play well while making an asylum claim.

It also helps a lot that Ecuador, which neighbors Colombia and where many migrants begin their journey north, became visa-free for Chinese visitors in 2015—the kind of information that litters Chinese online discussions on “runxue,” which means “run-ology” or “the art of running.” Douyin and other Chinese social media platforms are full of advice and encouragement for leaving China. Network effects have fueled Chinese infrastructure on the route, such as diaspora-run hotels and shops.

The journey isn’t cheap. Chinese organized crime plays a major role in illicit emigration and has forged tighter ties with the Latin American cartels that control migrant routes. On average, the trip from China to the U.S. southern border costs between $10,000 and $20,000; that often involves borrowing money from gangs that arrange the trip and paying it back with interest through work in the United States.

Although Chinese arrivals to the United States may remain at this level for a while, it’s not likely that they will increase exponentially again in 2024. More than a year has passed since China ended its COVID lockdowns, and U.S.-China tourist and business relations are returning to a relatively normal state. The Chinese economy isn’t doing great, but the slowdown alone doesn’t seem to be worth risking life and limb for.

What We’re Following

Xi’s media glitch? Xi is in Europe this week, seeking to mend relations damaged by Chinese support for Russia amid its war in Ukraine and to counteract European worries about Chinese industrial overcapacity. His trip began in France, reciprocating the red-carpet welcome given to French President Emmanuel Macron last year. The next destinations include countries that are closer to Russia, such as Hungary and Serbia.

The strangest event of the trip so far was a nearly daylong delay in publishing from key Chinese state media outlets, notably the People’s Daily, the CCP’s official newspaper. These outlets normally run like clockwork. The failure to update the websites may point to political uncertainty amid continued purges, but it seems more likely that there was a communications breakdown over a key diplomatic detail caused by the Paris-Beijing time difference.

July plenum announced. The CCP Central Committee will meet for its Third Plenum, a key party meeting, in July. In the esoteric language of communist bureaucratic formalities, plenums are the meetings held at semi-regular intervals in the five years between party congresses, at which major personnel decisions are announced. The decision to hold the Third Plenum in July is somewhat unusual, as the event tends to take place in the fall.

This plenum was expected to be held last year but was delayed, possibly as a result of China’s rolling political purges that have swept up several senior party and military figures. CCP meetings are held only after political decisions have been decided through internal and informal struggle, with rare exceptions. The announcement means that the situation may have somewhat stabilized.

Tech and Business

TikTok sues after U.S. law. Unsurprisingly, TikTok has sued the U.S. government after the passage of a law mandating divestment by Chinese parent company ByteDance to operate in the United States, claiming that it has violated the First Amendment by restricting free speech.

The lawsuit and any others that follow may take years to resolve, highlighting a stark difference between U.S. and Chinese governance. When Beijing objected to ByteDance products in China for insufficient censorship, they were either shuttered or censored virtually overnight, and the CEO provided a groveling apology.

U.K. hack accusations. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has accused a “malign actor” of hacking the country’s Ministry of Defence, widely seen to be a reference to China. The allegation is part of an intensifying series of concerns about Chinese espionage in the United Kingdom.

Along with the pandemic, Chinese espionage has played a strong role in pushing U.S. allies that once looked somewhat askance toward Washington’s hawkish position closer to the U.S. stance toward China. A major Canadian public inquiry just concluded that China attempted to interfere in the country’s last general election in 2021, albeit largely unsuccessfully.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• What America’s Palestine Protesters Should and Shouldn’t Do by Stephen M. Walt
• Nobody Is Competing With the U.S. to Begin With by Anatol Lieven
• The Very Real Limits of the Russia-China ‘No Limits’ Partnership by Keith Johnson

A Bit of Culture

Chinese leader Mao Zedong prided himself on being a poet, and his works remain mandatory school reading. Dissident Lin Zhao, who was executed 56 years ago last week, objected to Mao’s self-aggrandizing evocations of Chinese history and wrote a counter to one of his most well-known poems while in prison awaiting execution. (The poem was written on her prison uniform in blood.)

In Chinese, “boy usurper” uses the childhood name of Cao Cao, a famous second-century warlord who also prided himself on his poetry.—Brendan O’Kane, translator

“The People’s Liberation Army Takes Nanjing” by Mao Zedong

A storm swept over Mount Zhongshan,
Dark gray amid the twilight gold,
As a million heroes made their way
across the Yangtze River.
A “crouching tiger,” a “coiled dragon”—
The new Nanjing outshines the old.

Heaven is overturned and Earth trembles
in celebration of our victory.
Use your remaining valor to chase down the hapless foe,
Don’t ape the ambition of Xiang Yu the Tyrant.
If Heaven can feel, then Heaven too can age—
In this world, the only truth is change.

Untitled Response by Lin Zhao

Two dragons locked in mortal struggle:
Black Heaven flashes with glints of gold,
As countless wronged souls cast themselves
into the Yangtze River.
They’d drown before bending the knee to a villain—
As true today as it was of old.

Waving his sword, the boy usurper
blusters and versifies, dreaming of victory.
The land and all its bounty belong only to the common folk—
Mountains and rivers cannot be the property of tyrants.
A shameful stain covers China: innocent blood,
How empty are words about truth and change!