Chinese walk the line through jungles of Colombia to flee Xi
WHEN the police came knocking on Wu Lixin’s door one day, he knew it was finally time to flee China.
He had already been forced to shut his previously successful waterpurifying factory in Shenzhen, southeastern China, because of mounting bureaucracy, making 200 staff redundant in the process.
But it was after he converted to Christianity that things became worse. “I dedicated my home office to church services. I had to report to the police station every week and was harassed,” Mr Wu said. “In April 2021, about 50 officers detained 10 of us for questioning.” In 2023, he sent money to a rights activist using the WeChat app and “the next morning, the police were at my door”.
“I could not stay in a country that was becoming intolerable. I left everything to my family and left China with nothing,” he said.
“I hoped that as China’s economy developed, it would bring its people towards democracy and freedom.
“However, since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, the government has been outrageous and arrogant to deal with.” Rather than seeking asylum somewhere else in Asia, Mr Wu set his sights on the US. He now works as a forklift truck driver in Los Angeles.
And Mr Wu is not alone. About 37,000 Chinese migrants were detained at the southern US-Mexico border last year, according to US figures. That number is nearly 10 times the 2022 total and more than double that of the entire previous decade.
Of those 37,000, at least 25,000 had arrived via a deadly overland journey across the 165-mile-long Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia, making the Chinese the largest group from outside of the Americas to take the notorious people-smuggling route, and the fastest growing migrant group to do so. The phenomenon is known in Mandarin as “Zouxian”, or walk the line, and has become so prolific that it has spawned a meme on TikTok and Chinese social media sites such as Douyin, where people can solicit advice on the journey.
Mr Wu is a perfect example of why more Chinese are opting to take such a long and dangerous route into the US.
The uptick stems from several factors, from the suppression of rights by the Chinese regime to the weak economic recovery from stifling Covid-19 lockdowns, according to Prof Meredith Oyen, an expert in the history of Sino-American relations at the University of Maryland.
“You see a lot of examples of people who have combinations of those factors, like small-business owners who find they lose their business and in the political environment there is really no recourse for them,” she said.
“There are people who were once beneficiaries and would have been held up as models of the Chinese dream. It seems like a lot of these people are the ones taking the risk to leave.” Although numbers are small compared to the overall Chinese population, “there is a sense that it is a little bit of the canary in the coal mine”, Prof Oyen added.
The number of Chinese nationals arriving at the US’s southwest border in March 2024 increased by more than 8,000 per cent compared to March 2021, according to the House Committee on Homeland Security.
It has triggered suspicion on the American Right and added to a contentious migration debate ahead of the election, even though the group makes up a fraction of the record half-a-million migrants who crossed the Darién Gap last year, most of whom were Latin Americans.
“With the deterioration of our border security and the spike in Chinese national apprehensions, the US is at a higher risk of compromise to CCP aggression,” said the America First Policy Institute in a February briefing titled: “The Trojan Horse at the Southern Border: Malign CCP Infiltration.”
Asked on Fox News last month what he thought the “Chinese nationals” were doing at the southern border, Donald Trump, the former president, said: “They’re probably building an army from within.” There is no evidence to suggest that they are.
But there are strong political headwinds. This week it was reported that Beijing and Washington had quietly resumed co-operation on the deportation of Chinese immigrants who are in the US illegally.
To start a new life in the US, Chinese migrants must first survive the journey there. The 2,300-mile overland route towards the US-Mexico border begins in Ecuador, where Chinese citizens can enter without a visa, before many make their way to small Colombian towns near the Panama border, which mark the gateway to the Darién Gap.
Here, migrants are at the mercy of smuggling gangs and risk robbery, rape and murder by criminals stalking the remote jungle paths. There are also bites from deadly snakes, clifftops and fast-flowing rivers to contend with.
More cash can buy a quicker “VIP” passage, using boats or horseback rides along the Caribbean or Pacific coasts, but most cannot afford that option. Herman Huang, 40, a restaurant worker in New York, described a two-month journey that left him looking “10 years older,” after he fled China in December 2022.
“[The Darién Gap] is very rugged, with rivers, mountains, and cliffs… you can die if you accidentally fall off,” he said. “An Afghan was robbed on a spot a few minutes before our group arrived. The guide and the local gang were said to be colluding,” he added.
“The most difficult and dangerous route costs $100-200. There is a high probability of robbery and murder. There are often dead bodies along the way.” Even after escaping the jungle, Mr Huang faced extortion by Mexican police officers and gangs on his way to the US. “The police threatened to arrest us, and I almost died when my motorcycle overturned due to fear of being caught. My hands and feet were fractured,” he said. Despite his injuries, Mr Huang ran from the hospital to avoid deportation.
Leaving China, especially his wife and two small children, had been “difficult” but the fear of prison for his anti-government views was greater. “Many of my friends had been detained,” he said.
After Mr Huang left, the police showed his phone records to his family, accusing him of unspecified crimes. The pressure was so great, his wife considered divorce.
“Why do so many people risk taking this route? Many I know see China’s political condition clearly and escaped the oppressive environment to pursue freedom in the US,” he said.
Democracy activist Wang Jun, 33, escaped last May after being imprisoned in China for three years and tortured after attending a rights meeting in Shenzhen in 2016.
He chose to flee via the Darién Gap and arrived two months later in the US. “I had heard about the dangers of this route, but I never hesitated because I had no other options,” he said.
Along the way, he met plenty of other Chinese people in search of a more hopeful future. “Leaving China is a way of voting with their feet,” he said.