中國人的外流
The Chinese Exodus
Fears of a CCP sponsored invasion at the Mexican border are misplaced. People are fleeing China because its economy is in dire straits.
對中共支持入侵墨西哥邊境的擔憂是錯誤的。人們逃離中國是因為中國經濟陷入困境。
人們越來越擔心大量中國移民從南方湧入美國。 視頻片段顯示，大陸人在格蘭德河游泳，在檢查站擁擠，並在大風的夜晚排隊向邊境保護官員出示文件。佛羅里達海灘上的日光浴者凝視著中國男男女女背著行李從海浪中冒出，渾身濕淋淋的。但大多數活動都發生在美國和墨西哥邊境沿線，10 月至 6 月期間，約有 13,000 名中國大陸人被捕 — — 比上一年增加了 1,000%，令人震驚。他們的路線似乎總是一樣的。 他們首先飛往委內瑞拉和薩爾瓦多，然後長途跋涉穿過巴拿馬達連峽的沼澤地和雨林，到達德克薩斯州邊境。他們在那裡請求庇護，經過“處理”，然後消失在美國。
那些在 Twitter 上發布這些視頻的人對這一切的含義毫不懷疑：“大多數是單身、軍人年齡的男性，留著軍裝風格的髮型。……為什麼拜登政權允許我們的對手入侵？” 鑑於人民解放軍已經在委內瑞拉開展雙邊軍事活動， 他們認為這條移民路線具有重要意義。 中國軍隊似乎已經進入了特洛伊城的大門。
這真的是偷襲嗎？該黨可能想用潛伏特工滲透美國社會的原因有很多。它們可能會加速美國的巨大衰落，而北京方面如此熱切地相信這一點（但錯誤的是：證據表明美國霸權將在本世紀持續存在）。他們可以參加騷亂、犯罪、煽動暴力、建立組織。他們可以支持黨的間諜計劃 — — 就在本月，中共間諜在美國海軍中被剷除。 潛伏特工可以對關鍵人員進行有針對性的暗殺（中共似乎已經在台灣計劃這樣做，作為接管的前奏）。
入侵理論的支持者聽起來既神秘又確定：這種不和諧的混合破壞了他們的立場。“我們不知道這些人是誰，”眾議院國土安全委員會主席馬克·格林在透露他有一個很好的主意之前說道。“中國很可能效仿俄羅斯向烏克蘭派遣軍事人員的模式，在美國做同樣的事情。” 他接著說，這些闖入者中的許多人“與解放軍有已知的聯繫”。很難不懷疑政治得分。果然，拜登的名字在強調這一“入侵”的帖子中被反复輕蔑地提及。
有人想知道，區分秘密軍事行動和移民/難民人數完全可預測的增長的標準是什麼？畢竟，現在正是我們期望看到中國大規模外流的時候。中國社會剛剛擺脫三年零新冠停滯期 — — 這三年漫長、黑暗、幽閉恐怖的快速封鎖和大規模檢測的歲月。改革開放後，中國經濟的狀況十分糟糕。2023 年第一季度外國直接投資降至 200億美元（即使在零新冠時代的混亂和不確定性下，該數字仍是 2022 年相應季度的五倍）。今年夏天早些時候，城市地區青年失業率升至21.3% 的歷史新高， 當局臉紅後乾脆停止發布數據。 這只是城市 — — 該國廣大內陸地區的失業狀況仍然是個謎。
封鎖摧毀了中小型企業。至於巨頭， 目前中國百強企業中有三分之二降低了畢業生招聘名額。華為實際上已停止招聘；阿里巴巴去年裁員1.5萬人。地方政府面臨破產。 而現在中國已經進入了通貨緊縮。價格下跌有可能加劇一切，打擊本已低迷的信心，抑製本已步履蹣跚的投資，給本來就因失業而癱瘓的社會帶來失業。
似乎未來還不夠黯淡，還有一個因素是共產黨的無能及其對普通生活的災難性影響。我們在七月份的颱風多克蘇里（Doksuri）之後就看到了這一點。創紀錄的洪水促使當局將水庫溢流轉移到河北省周邊人口稠密的地區，試圖阻止北京不斷上漲的水位。通常情況下，溢洪道會將洪水引導到首都郊外重要的一片低窪地帶。但這片廣闊的土地正在轉變為一座全新的城市：雄安。總統的另一個寵愛項目 — — 他考慮不周的幻想 — — 必須不惜一切代價保護雄安。於是水就被改道了，很快就成為了河北不幸居民的問題（他們將為首都提供“護城河”，”（省委書記倪岳峰空洞的評價）。由此造成的死亡人數仍未知。
當這個國家的公民展望未來時，他們看到失業、孤立、生活水平下降，以及更糟糕的情況 — — 中國現代皇帝這種始終存在的黑天鵝因素，幾乎肯定會以隨機和災難性的方式不斷擾亂他們的生活。一個公民可以過著平靜的生活，遠離麻煩，在宗教和政治上遵守黨的路線，在正確的時刻賄賂所有正確的人。正如封鎖年代所證明的那樣，這沒有什麼區別。沒有人是安全的。很多人腦子裡的主要想法肯定是：“我怎樣才能離開這裡？”
2022 年 4 月左右，在墨西哥邊境被捕的中國移民數量開始急劇增加。2022年 4 月也是如今傳奇般的上海封鎖 的第一個月，這並非巧合，當時數百萬養尊處優的城市居民發現自己面臨著飢餓 — — 來自中國過去的可怕幽靈，他們從未想過會看到的東西，現在從歷史書中升起，並用空洞的眼睛回望著他們。換句話說，這正是人們最有可能開始尋找逃生途徑的時候。
至於“留著軍裝髮型的單身軍齡男性”，所描繪的大多數男性可能很年輕，但乍一看並不意味著軍事級別。事實上，由於共產黨灌輸的同質化、集體主義文化 — — 一種試圖打破所有個性表達的文化，那些有罪的軍事式髮型在普通中國大陸人中比在美國同行中更為常見。處於戰鬥年齡的單身男性也恰好是那些總是從各個國家冒險出國尋求更好生活的人群。錢會被寄回家鄉，幾年後這些家庭可能會走上麵包師的道路。在中國境內，這些憤怒的美國評論員沒有註意到，大量的“單身、
我們甚至還有一些經歷了拉丁美洲偉大冒險的中國人的詳細故事。黃丹尼爾一直在努力尋找工作，並且因參與合同抗議而面臨入獄的威脅，因此他決定競選。 首先，他通過支付假海外大學錄取通知書的費用獲得了護照。隨後，他在說服中國邊境官員他需要前往土耳其考察餐館後獲得了簽證。他安全地離開中國，飛往伊斯坦布爾，然後前往厄瓜多爾，在那裡他付錢給走私者，讓他越過哥倫比亞邊境，然後將他帶到達連峽的邊緣 — — 這是地球上最荒涼的地方之一，也是最危險的地方所有移民路線。
一旦進去，就沒有路了。峽口長 66 英里。旅行者必須涉水穿過沼澤和叢林，時刻留意巴西流浪蜘蛛、蘭斯毒蛇、蝎子、美洲虎和毒箭蛙，這些毒箭蛙傳統上為某些部落提供致命的毒素吹飛鏢。未爆炸的炸彈像另一種致命物種一樣潛伏在泥土下面 — — 冷戰期間美國軍事訓練的遺產。有時，槍聲在森林樹冠下迴響，表明哥倫比亞革命武裝力量 (FARC) 的存在。他們沿著小路駐紮並搶劫移民。叢林裡充滿了寄生蟲，大多數人遲早都會生病。對於他們中的一些人來說，繼續下去是不可能的。
一旦走出叢林並回到墨西哥的文明社會，情況就幾乎沒有改善。為了躲避警察，黃某和另外三名中國人最終騎著兩輛摩托車穿越了墨西哥101號聯邦公路。這條路通常被稱為“死亡高速公路”，長 300 英里，由歹徒巡邏，他們劫持公共汽車和汽車，進行隨機強姦、斬首和強迫角斗比賽，以尋找販毒集團的新成員。 果然，就在拉科馬郊外，移民們發現自己被一輛滿載男子的貨車追趕，他們揮舞著槍，高喊著“奇諾，奇諾！” 黃成功到達最近的軍事檢查站，但第二輛摩托車被抓獲。一名居住者爬到柵欄下逃脫，距離死亡只有幾英寸，強盜抓著他的腳，搶走了他的鞋子。他的同伴被拖進了他們的貨車，在那裡他想到了假裝心髒病發作的救生主意。很久以後，他被士兵發現，躺在路邊，嚴重脫水。
離開中國大約60天后，黃丹尼爾終於翻過邊境牆進入德克薩斯州，在那裡開始了庇護申請程序。這兩個月的非同尋常的考驗真的是北京將政府人員偷偷帶入該國的手段嗎？即使是最熱情的危言聳聽者也必須承認這種方法的奇怪。當我們想到中國絕望的逃亡者時，這些入侵報告開始感覺像是一種侮辱，他們在夜間在海洋、沼澤和山口中，冒著一切危險，爬過巴拿馬地峽，到達連接北美和南美的長絲帶。 — — 通往自由之地的懸垂生命線。
“又一個由軍齡男子組成的公司前往美國，”最近的一篇 Muckraker 帖子憤怒地說道。 在隨附的視頻中，攝像機拍攝到巴拿馬聖維森特移民營地排起長隊的男人、女人和兒童。幾個男人都轉過頭，以免自己的臉被拍到。也許這就是潛伏特工會做的事。也許這就是毒騾會做的事，他身上藏著芬太尼前體。 如果你是一個普通的中國公民，第一次緊張地踏入異國他鄉，你也可能會這麼做。在極權主義的中國長大，鏡頭如海，你已經夠偏執了，當你為家人計劃一次長期的危險逃生時，你的偏執只會增加。現在完全陌生的人正在拍攝你的臉，對你咆哮：“中國？中國？”
不幸的是，在世界許多地方，中國人的待遇可能會惡化。北京的經濟愚蠢是罪魁禍首。“一帶一路”倡議向 150 個國家提供了 1 萬億美元貸款，預計於 2020 年代後半葉償還。其中許多國家不穩定，但仍在發展中。貸款將不會被償還。根據共產黨自己的估計，它在巴基斯坦將損失80%的資金，在緬甸將損失50%，在中亞將損失30%。 這給北京留下了兩個選擇。它可以簡單地沖銷數千億美元的損失。或者它可以開始扣押債務國的資產，其中許多國家正在努力養活自己的人民。
正如學者哈爾·布蘭茲和邁克爾·貝克利在他們的著作《危險地帶：即將到來的與中國的衝突》中提醒我們的那樣，我們已經看到了這會導致什麼結果。2017年，斯里蘭卡拖欠“一帶一路”貸款：
“債務陷阱外交”的指控從新德里到東京再到華盛頓，大量國家退出“一帶一路”或要求重新談判合同，反華政黨在幾個夥伴國家上台。與此同時，中國公民大聲質疑為什麼他們的政府要在海外投資數十億美元並損失數十億美元，而一半以上的中國人口每天的生活費仍不足 10 美元。
在未來幾年裡，同樣的故事可能會一再上演。“一帶一路”倡議已經在馬來西亞、哈薩克斯坦、吉爾吉斯斯坦、柬埔寨和贊比亞引發抗議，憤怒的當地人抗議殖民、腐敗、污染、財產損失、收入損失、生計受損等。這些抗議活動在某些情況下導致基礎設施項目被匆忙取消。本月早些時候，巴基斯坦的一支中國工程師車隊遭到襲擊，長期存在的反“一帶一路”抗議活動升級 前往瓜達爾深水港（一帶一路項目）的途中。襲擊者引爆了路邊炸彈，然後向車輛開火。
反華情緒不斷高漲。隨著中國經濟繼續穩步下滑，北京失去其長期強大的金融影響力的保護盾，憤世嫉俗者和偽君子會突然發現他們有百萬零一個理由來憎恨中國 — — 當然，首先是共產黨犯下 的種族滅絕。
維吾爾人有可能威脅中國的國家統一，這就是我們看到自大屠殺以來最大規模的少數民族或宗教少數群體被監禁的真正原因。
如果絕望的北京在本十年晚些時候開始奪取亞洲和非洲的資產，那麼憤怒將達到致命的新頂峰。我們可能希望這種憤怒僅僅針對領導黨的兇殘的野蠻人。可悲的是，這可能是大多數人的期望過高。中共自己的海外宣傳已經無可救藥地混淆了政權和國家之間的區別。而且識別表型標記比識別政治傾向更容易。
也許那些敏銳的攝像機在掃描聖維森特的隊伍，尋找贈品功能，這預示著未來。“中國？中國？” 這並不是說這些記者中有任何一個反華分子。但在更黑暗的背景下，這一場景可能會重演，尤其是隨著局勢惡化和中國人大規模外流的增加。如果大規模的種族仇恨迫在眉睫，那麼我們需要一個解決方案。
想要避免恐華症並不需要我們不小心。中國的間諜是真實存在的，而且數量眾多。那些與解放軍甚至中共有明確聯繫的人在美國或任何其他西方國家都沒有地位。但這些人在經歷了達連峽谷的恐怖之後，不太可能在墨西哥邊境排隊。他們找到其他入口點。
Fears are growing about the large influx of Chinese migrants entering the United States from the south. Video footage shows mainlanders swimming the Rio Grande, crowding at checkpoints, and lining up on a windy night to present documents to border protection officials. Sunbathers on Floridian beaches stare as Chinese men and women emerge dripping from the surf, laden with luggage. But most activity is to be found along the US-Mexico border, where some 13,000 mainland Chinese were apprehended between October and June — a startling increase of 1,000 percent on the previous year. Their route, it seems, is always the same. First they fly into Venezuela and El Salvador, then they trek up through the marshlands and rainforests of Panama’s Darién Gap to the Texan border. There they request asylum, go through “processing,” and disappear into the United States.
Those who post these videos on Twitter have no doubt as to what it all means: “Majority are single, military age men sporting military style haircuts. … Why is the Biden regime allowing an invasion from our adversaries?” They see great significance in the migration route, given that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) already carries out bilateral military activities in Venezuela. The Chinese army, it would seem, is already inside the gates of Troy.
Is this really a stealth invasion? There are many reasons the Party might want to infiltrate American society with sleeper agents. They could speed the great American decline in which Beijing believes so fervently (and mistakenly: the evidence suggests US hegemony will persist this century). They could join riots, commit crimes, incite violence, establish cells. They could bolster the Party’s espionage project — just this month, CCP spies were rooted out in the US Navy. Sleeper agents could carry out targeted assassinations of key personnel (something that the CCP already seems to be planning in Taiwan as a prelude to takeover).
Proponents of the invasion theory sound both mystified and certain: a jarring mix that undermines their position. “We have no idea who these people are,” said Mark Green, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman, before revealing that he has a pretty good idea. “It’s very likely, using Russia’s template of sending military personnel into Ukraine, China is doing the same in the United States.” Many of these interlopers, he went on to say, have “known ties to the PLA.” It’s hard not to suspect political point-scoring. Sure enough, Biden’s name is repeatedly and contemptuously evoked in the threads highlighting this “invasion.”
What are the criteria, one wonders, for distinguishing between a covert military operation and an entirely predictable rise in migrant/refugee numbers? After all, now is exactly the time we would expect to see a mass exodus from the Middle Kingdom. Chinese society has just emerged from three years of zero-COVID stasis — three long, dark, claustrophobic years of snap lockdowns and mass testing. Post-opening, China’s economy is in a terrible state. Foreign direct investment fell to $20 billion in the first quarter of 2023 (it was five times that figure in the corresponding quarter of 2022, even amid the chaos and uncertainty of the zero-COVID era). Youth unemployment in urban areas rose to a record high of 21.3 percent earlier this summer, before red-faced authorities simply stopped publishing the data. That was just the cities — the unemployment situation in the country’s vast interior remains a mystery.
The Loneliness of the ‘Bridge Man’ Generation
China’s dissenters are isolated. But they are not as isolated as they once were.
Lockdowns decimated small- and medium-sized businesses. As for the giants, two-thirds of China’s top 100 companies have now lowered their graduate recruitment quotas. Huawei has virtually stopped hiring; Alibaba cut 15,000 jobs last year. Local governments face bankruptcy. And now China has entered deflation. Falling prices threaten to exacerbate everything, depressing confidence that was already depressed, discouraging investment that was already faltering, bringing unemployment to a society already crippled by unemployment.
As if the future wasn’t bleak enough, there is the additional factor of the Communist Party’s incompetence and its catastrophic impact on ordinary lives. We saw this after Typhoon Doksuri, back in July. Record flooding prompted authorities to divert reservoir overflow into heavily populated areas throughout the surrounding Hebei province — an attempt to keep rising waters from Beijing. Normally, spillways would direct floodwater into a crucial expanse of low-lying land just outside the capital. But that expanse is being transformed into a brand new city: Xiong’an. Yet another of the President’s pet projects — his ill-conceived fancies — Xiong’an must be protected at all costs. And so the water was redirected, and soon became the problem of the unfortunate residents of Hebei (they would provide “a moat for the capital,” in the airy assessment of provincial Party secretary Ni Yuefeng). The resulting death toll is still unknown.
As the country’s citizens look to their future, they see unemployment, isolation, declining living standards, and worse — the ever-present black swan element that is China’s modern-day Emperor, virtually guaranteed to keep interrupting their lives in random and disastrous ways. A citizen may live a quiet life, staying out of trouble, toeing the Party line on religion and politics, bribing all the right people at the right moments. It makes no difference, as the lockdown years proved. No one is safe. The main thought in many people’s minds will surely be: “How do I get the hell out of here?”
How Damaging Will the Coronavirus be to Xi Jinping’s Authority?
Those Chinese migrant apprehensions along the Mexican border began their radical rise in numbers around April 2022. It can be no coincidence that April 2022 was also the first month of the now-legendary Shanghai lockdown, when millions of pampered urbanites found themselves facing starvation — that dreaded ghost from China’s past, something they never expected to see, now risen from the history books and looking right back at them with hollow eyes. It was exactly the time, in other words, that people would be most likely to start seeking a means of escape.
As for “single, military age men sporting military style haircuts,” most of the men depicted may be young, but first glance does not suggest military-grade. And those incriminating military-style haircuts are actually far more common among ordinary mainland Chinese than their American counterparts, due to the homogenising, collectivist culture inculcated by the Communist Party — a culture that seeks to break down all expressions of individuality. Single men of fighting age also happen to be the very demographic that has always ventured abroad, from all countries, in search of a better life. Money is sent back home to families, and those families may follow the breadmaker’s path after some years. Within China, unnoticed by these angry American commentators, huge numbers of “single, military age men sporting military style haircuts” spill into the major cities every year, looking for the work they can’t find in the rural provinces of their origin.
We even have detailed stories from some of the Chinese who undertook the great Latin American odyssey. Daniel Huang was struggling to find work, and also facing the threat of jail time after participating in protests over contracts, so he decided to make a run for it. First, he obtained a passport after paying for a fake overseas college acceptance letter. Then he obtained a visa after convincing Chinese border officials that he needed to go to Turkey to survey restaurants. Safely out of China, he flew to Istanbul and on to Ecuador, where he paid smugglers to drive him over the Colombian border before sailing him to the edge of the Darién Gap — one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, and the most dangerous of all migrant routes.
Once inside, there are no roads. The Gap is 66 miles long. Travellers must wade through swamp and hack through jungle, keeping an eye out all the time for Brazilian wandering spiders, fer-de-lance pit vipers, scorpions, jaguars, and the poison dart frogs that have traditionally provided certain tribes with the toxins for lethal blowdarts. Unexploded bombs lurk beneath the mud like another deadly species — the legacy of US military training runs during the Cold War. Sometimes gunshots echo under the forest canopy, indicating the presence of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). They position themselves along the trail and rob migrants. The jungle seethes with parasites, and most people fall sick sooner or later. For some of them it becomes impossible to go on. Huang realised the fetid stench hanging over the trail was likely caused by unburied corpses in the undergrowth.
Things hardly improved once out of the jungle and back to civilisation in Mexico. To avoid the police, Huang and three other Chinese ended up traversing Mexican Federal Highway 101 on two motorcycles. Commonly referred to as the “Highway of Death,” this is 300 miles of road patrolled by gangsters who hijack buses and cars to carry out random rapes, decapitations, and forced gladiatorial contests in search of new cartel recruits. Sure enough, just outside La Coma, the migrants found themselves pursued by a van full of men waving guns and shouting “Chino, Chino!” Huang made it to the nearest military checkpoint, but the second motorcycle was caught. One occupant escaped by crawling under a fence, inches from death, banditos clawing at his feet and taking his shoes. His companion was hauled into their van, where he had the lifesaving idea to fake a heart attack. He was found much later by soldiers, lying at the roadside in a state of severe dehydration.
Some 60 days after leaving China, Daniel Huang finally scaled the border wall into Texas, where he began the process of asylum application. Is this extraordinary two-month ordeal really the means by which Beijing sneaks government operatives into the country? Even the most passionate of scaremongers must concede the oddness of the method. Those invasion reports begin to feel like an insult when we think of China’s desperate escapees, out there at night in seas and swamps and mountain passes, risking it all as they climb through the Isthmus of Panama to the long ribbon that links North and South America — the dangling lifeline to the land of the free.
“Another company of military-aged men headed for the United States,” fumes a recent Muckraker post. In the accompanying video, a camera ranges over long queues of men, women, and children at the San Vicente migrant camp in Panama. Several men turn their heads so that their faces will not be captured. Perhaps that is what a sleeper agent would do. Perhaps it is what a drug mule would do, with fentanyl precursors concealed about his person. It’s also what you might do if you were a normal Chinese citizen making your first nervous foray into a foreign land. Paranoid enough after growing up in totalitarian China, with its perpetual sea of cameras, your paranoia would only increase when planning a long-term hazardous escape for your family. And now complete strangers are filming your face, barking at you: “China? China?”
Unfortunately, the treatment of Chinese may be about to worsen in many parts of the world. Beijing’s economic folly is to blame. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) saw a trillion dollars given in loans to 150 countries, with repayment due in the latter half of the 2020s. Many of these countries are unstable, still developing. The loans will not be repaid. By the Communist Party’s own estimates, it stands to lose 80 percent of its money in Pakistan, 50 percent in Myanmar, and 30 percent across Central Asia. This leaves Beijing with two options. It can simply write off hundreds of billions of dollars in losses. Or it can begin seizing assets in debtor states, many of which are struggling to feed their own people.
We’ve already seen where this leads, as the scholars Hal Brands and Michael Beckley remind us in their book Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China. In 2017, Sri Lanka defaulted on BRI loans:
Charges of “debt-trap diplomacy” reverberated from New Delhi to Tokyo to Washington, droves of countries dropped out of BRI or demanded to renegotiate their contracts, and anti-China political parties swept into power in several partner nations. Meanwhile, Chinese citizens wondered aloud why their government was investing, and losing, billions overseas when more than half of China’s population still lived on less than $10 per day.
That same narrative could play out time and again over the coming years. The BRI has already sparked protests in Malaysia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, and Zambia, as angry locals protest colonisation, corruption, pollution, lost property, lost income, damage to livelihoods, and so on. These protests have led in some cases to the hasty cancellation of infrastructure projects. In Pakistan earlier this month, longstanding anti-BRI protests escalated when a convoy of Chinese engineers was attacked en route to the deep-water port at Gwadar (a Belt and Road project). The assailants detonated a roadside bomb, and then opened fire on the vehicles.
Anti-China sentiment is on the rise. As the Chinese economy continues its steady decline and Beijing loses the protective shield of its long-formidable financial clout, the cynics and the hypocrites will suddenly find that they have a million and one reasons to hate China — starting, of course, with the multiple genocides committed by the Communist Party.
If a desperate Beijing begins seizing assets across Asia and Africa later this decade, then the anger will reach a deadly new apogee. We might hope that such anger would be directed solely at the murderous brutes who lead the Party. Sadly, this is probably expecting too much from most people. The distinction between regime and nation has been hopelessly muddied by the CCP’s own overseas propaganda. And it’s just easier to identify phenotypic markers than political affiliations.
Perhaps there was a harbinger of the future in those keen cameras scanning the lines at San Vicente, hunting for the giveaway features. “China? China?” This is not to say that any of those journalists were Sinophobes. But the scene is one that may repeat itself in a darker context, especially as the situation worsens and the great Chinese exodus increases. If large-scale race hatred is looming on our horizon, then we need a solution.
A wish to avoid Sinophobia does not require us to be incautious. Chinese spies are real and numerous. Those with proven connections to the PLA — or even the CCP — have no place in the United States or in any other Western country. But these people are not likely to be found queueing at the Mexican border after navigating the horrors of the Darién Gap. They find other points of ingress.
reference:https://quillette.com/2023/08/24/the-chinese-exodus/
