Short Take is a periodic series where China Law & Policy briefly analyzes a current China-related issue and give our take. We aim for 500 words or less (around a 4-minute read).

Last week, New York Times’ reporter, Li Yuan, appeared on The Daily in a fascinating podcast that retold the story Gao Zhibian, a Chinese migrant who entered the United States by taking the perilous trek across Central America’s Darien Gap and up through Mexico, eventually crossing the Texas border. What caught my attention was the numbers Yuan reported. In 2023, 24,000 Chinese citizens took this path. That number surpassed the number of Chinese crossing the Mexican border from the previous 10 years combined. Prior to 2023, Chinese migration through Mexico was a mere 1,500 per year.

For years, if not decades, Chinese citizens have been able to travel visa-free to Ecuador. It is from there that they trudge through the Darien Gap, Central America, Mexico to reach the US. This has long been the route of choice for Chinese citizens unable to obtain a US student visa, an H1-B visa, or even a tourist visa. In other words, this has been the only way into the US for China’s migrant workers, the farmers from the countryside that moved to China’s cities to become the construction and factory workers. It is these workers that largely propelled China out of poverty, enabling it to become the second largest economy in the world. With increased income, they too shared in China’s economic miracle.

What has caused this sixteen-fold increase in the last year?  No doubt China’s slowing economy, whose future is uncertain, is one reason. But it is more than that as Yuan shows in her interview with Gao Zhibian. Gao didn’t leave China solely because of the economy. After succeeding as a migrant worker, he ended up developing a small apartment building in the suburbs of Beijing, becoming a small-time landlord. But in 2018, the local government confiscated his land to sell to richer developers, with the local government retaining all the profits. Gao sought justice through China’s legal system in the form of petitioning to the national government. But he and his family were constantly harassed by the local authorities and Gao gave up his fight, losing his land and receiving little to no compensation. It was the Chinese legal system’s failure to provide justice or even establish a fair system that caused Gao to start researching migrating to the US through Central America. 

Similarly, CNN, in its excellent, in-depth reporting on Chinese migration from Ecuador, featured a Chinese migrant that also fled China because of the lack of justice. Zheng Shiqing, a 28-year-old, high school migrant worker, left China after his factory wages were unlawfully withheld and the formal complaint he filed was ignored.

Economics certainly plays a major role in the increased Chinese migrants along the US’ southern border, but for both Gao and Zeng, it’s the Chinese legal system’s failure to provide for any form of redress that adds to the mix.[1] For China’s migrants, it is this lack of a rule of law that any hope that the legal system can protect the rights of the weak.

Recommended reading/listening:

Li Yuan and Michael Barbaro, How China broke one man’s dreams, New York Times’ The Daily (Feb. 15, 2024), 32 min listen.

Yong Xiong, Simone McCarthy and David Culver, The ‘walking route’: How an underground industry is helping migrants flee China for the US, CNN (Jan. 8, 2024), 15 min read.

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[1] What doesn’t play a role are the far-right media’s unsubstantiated claims and racist tropes that these Chinese migrants are spies for the Chinese Communist Party.

On February 10, we say goodbye to the introspective, more pensive rabbit and greet the most prized of all the Chinese zodiac signs, the dragon. But not just any ordinary dragon; 2024 ushers in the year of the wood dragon. Buckle up because it is going to be a wild ride!

In addition to being associated with a zodiac animal, each year is also associated with one of the five elements (earth, wood, water, fire, metal). This year’s element is wood. While the dragon is an auspicious sign, it is also a volatile one, offering fast-paced opportunities that could yield tremendous successes or abysmal failures. The wood element – which fuels flames – enhances the intensity of the dragon. Expect the possibility of great transformations that positively impact the course of world events. In the last wood dragon year, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr. won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Beatles arrived in America, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed. But there were also great upheavals. The U.S. radically ramped up its involvement in Vietnam and students began protesting en masse; Nelson Mandela, after giving his “I am prepared to die” speech, was sentenced to life by a South African court; the second most powerful earthquake – registering a 9.2 on the Richter scale – occurred in Alaska; and three civil rights workers, a part of the 1964 Freedom Summer, were brutally murdered in Mississippi.

But we should keep hope that the wood dragon will usher in peace and positivity in the world as the dragon is not just the most revered animal of the Chinese zodiac, it is also the kindest. When the Jade Emperor, ruler of heaven and earth, created the Chinese zodiac, he decided to create a 12-year cycle calendar, with an animal representing each year. Instead of just choosing his favorites, he challenged the animals of the world to a race. The first 12 to arrive at his palace on the other side of the river would become part of the zodiac. The dragon came in fifth. Shocked, the Jade Emperor asked the dragon how that could have happened given that he can fly. The dragon told him that he had gotten waylaid. First, he had to stop to help provide rain to a village of farmers whose crops were dying from draught. Then, as he was about to fly across the river, he saw the rabbit clinging on to a log in a sad attempt to cross the river. “I had to help the rabbit” the dragon told the Jade Emperor. “So I blew gently on the log to make sure the rabbit would safely arrive on the other side of the river.”  

For the dragon, power should be used to help others, not dominate over them. And that fits with some of the most famous dragons: Bruce Lee; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Joan of Arc; John Lennon; Adele; and Pelé. With the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the U.S. presidential election, hopefully this characteristic of using power to help others will dominate in the year to come. Heavens knows we need it.

What does the wood dragon have in store for you? That all depends on your own Chinese zodiac sign. Fortunately, the aptly named website, The Chinese Zodiac.com has listed its Lunar New Year predictions for the 12 zodiac signs. You can read what is in store for you here (remember those born in late January to early February should look up the precise date of the lunar new year for your birth year to make sure you have the right zodiac sign).

Ultimately the lunar new year is less about predictions than it is about spending time with family and friends. So to our East Asian friends who celebrate the lunar new year, 恭喜发财! (Gong Xi Fa Cai – pronounced gong see fa tsai and meaning “wishing happiness and wealth”).