In early July, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deported 116 Chinese nationals on a charter flight back to China—the first such instance since 2018. The move was the latest expression of increased U.S. concern over the rapid growth of illegal immigration from China in recent years.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, more than 1 million people have left China, frustrated by restrictive lockdown policies, the country’s economic downturn and bleak job prospects, and tightened political control. In China, this is often referred to in semi-coded fashion as run—a play on the Chinese word for profit, which is a homophone for the English word “run.” Although Canada, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and other countries have also seen a surge in Chinese migrants, the United States is one of their top destinations.
Most people are emigrating legally, but since January 2023, there have been more than 50,000 encounters between Chinese nationals and U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at the United States-Mexico border—a 1,000 percent increase compared with the combined encounters in 2022 and 2021. Although Chinese nationals have made up only 2 percent of all migrant encounters at the border since last October, the unusual uptick in migration—compounded by ongoing geopolitical tensions with China—has triggered intensified scrutiny from the media and lawmakers alike.
In some corners of the government and the national security community, a worrisome narrative about this trend has taken root: that these migrants are arriving with the intent of conducting espionage on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). A January letter to Congress from former FBI, DHS, and law enforcement officials warned that illegal Chinese immigration could be part of a ploy to “devastate national infrastructure,” while Rep. Mike Ezell has said it would be “nonsense” to think that China “would not use an open border to their advantage.” House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green has gone so far as to liken the migrants to the unmarked military personnel Russia used during its 2014 invasion of Crimea and described skepticism of this rhetoric as CCP “talking points.”
However, characterizing this wave of migration primarily as a security threat is not only factually incorrect—it’s also a missed opportunity for U.S. soft power in its strategic competition with China.
Proponents of the espionage narrative argue that because most of these migrants are young, military-aged men, they could be entering the United States to commit sabotage on behalf of the CCP. This argument, however, is not supported by available evidence.
The most detailed source of data on these migrants is Ecuador’s Statistical Registry of International Entries and Exits. This is because, until recently, Ecuador was one of only two mainland countries in the Western Hemisphere to offer visa-free travel for Chinese migrants. Reporting indicates that most Chinese migrants who enter the hemisphere do so through Ecuador before crossing into Colombia, then through the Darién Gap in Panama, and onward through Central America until they reach the U.S.-Mexico border. Using this as a proxy, the Ecuadorian travel data indicates that 71 percent of Chinese migrants are male and 53 percent are between the ages of 20 and 39. These are close to figures taken from the Honduran government, which estimates that 65 percent are male and 56 percent are between 21 and 40.
While this data may dovetail with the spy theory’s allegations, there are other, more plausible explanations for this gender and age imbalance. As a result of the CCP’s decades-long one-child policy, China has an excess male population of nearly 35 million. Because of this imbalance, many men face poor prospects for finding a spouse within China—and the resulting social prejudice against single men, known as “bare branches.”
Immigration can be a more appealing and less complicated option for single men who don’t need to factor in children or a spouse into their considerations. Additionally, given how notoriously physically strenuous and especially dangerous the journey through the Darién Gap is for women and children, it makes sense that a disproportionate number of these migrants are young men.
Another key difference between those traveling through the U.S. southern border and those who immigrate to other countries is their wealth. Migrants to Canada, Japan, and Singapore are among the most affluent in China, while those risking their lives to travel through the jungles of Central America are oftentimes first-generation college graduates from rural areas.
Still, the cost of this migration is steep, averaging $20,000 per person, indicating that educated middle-class Chinese citizens are becoming desperate to leave China while they still have the funds to do so. With no end in sight to the economic downturn, many have chosen to flee before Beijing tightens emigration laws or makes it even harder to take money out of the country.
According to the Ecuadorian entries and exit registry, 78 percent of Chinese travelers listed a middle- or high-skilled occupation upon entry. Rather than emigrating after securing new jobs, these migrants are uprooting their lives in search of economic opportunity and political freedom in the United States. This new wave’s motivations mirror those of previous generations, from the laborers who built the Transcontinental Railroad in the mid-1800s to the graduate students who decided to stay in the United States after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Perhaps the most damning case against the spy theory is that on a basic operational level, CCP infiltration of the United States through this channel of migration makes no sense. As other experts have written in these pages, CCP espionage largely focuses on collecting information on sensitive and high-level U.S. defense and political matters to which these migrants would not have access. Even for raw intelligence collection, China has often used citizens on tourist visas to photograph U.S. military bases—not migrants applying for humanitarian relief. If merely entering the United States undetected were the goal, the fact that Chinese migrants overwhelmingly present themselves for asylum negates this benefit and also requires them to hand over their biometric data to the U.S. government.
Beyond factual inaccuracies, labeling Chinese migrants as spies obscures the strategic implications that this outward-bound migration has for the CCP’s image both domestically and abroad.
In the systemic competition between democracy and authoritarianism, the arrival of Chinese migrants at the U.S. southern border in search of a better life proves that the U.S. system remains more attractive. Many migrants express doubts about China’s long-term economic prospects: “You see tragedies happen around you that the news wouldn’t even mention,” one migrant told Nikkei Asia. “Look at the property crisis. A banking crisis will soon follow, and what industry can survive in this environment?”
On a more personal level, the fact that tens of thousands of Chinese citizens have made the difficult decision to leave their homes suggests that many have lost faith in a social contract that has failed to deliver long-term economic security in exchange for political control. “I know the U.S. is not a paradise, but I know where hell is,” another migrant said while waiting in Mexico for an asylum appointment. “I had to get out of there.”
While the scale of this migration has been relatively modest compared with China’s colossal population, a larger exodus of youth and the middle class would strain the CCP’s ability to meet its strategic objectives in the future. Some Chinese cities have already begun pursuing tax clawbacks after the property market downturn; the contracting economy and slumping demographic conditions have also led to a recruitment crisis within the People’s Liberation Army.
Even discounting its acceptance of the U.S. deportation flight, a bevy of other actions from the Chinese government confirm that the CCP views outward-bound migration as an embarrassment for its national image and a liability for its national interests. When Ecuador announced that it would no longer allow Chinese nationals to enter the country without visas, the official government response was muted. Elsewhere, the announcement of a new flight path between Guangzhou and Caracas was noticeably made without an accompanying visa-free travel arrangement between China and Venezuela. This is rather telling, considering how heavily indebted the current Venezuelan government is to China, which ensures its quiet cooperation in repatriating any migrants who use the route to escape persecution. And despite its high level of investment in Nicaragua, China is conspicuously absent from the raft of recent countries that Managua has signed visa-free travel agreements with as a way of facilitating illegal immigration toward the United States.
Taken together, painting these migrants as spies only serves to perpetuate misconceptions about CCP espionage and anti-Asian sentiment among the American public and lawmakers alike. As leaders in Washington debate how to handle Chinese migrants at the southern border, it would be wise to take a step back and view the broader picture: It is more threatening to CCP rule that people are fleeing mainland China than it is dangerous for the United States to once again be the destination that offers protection of rights and economic opportunities.
Rather than treat Chinese asylum-seekers as a security threat, U.S. policymakers should lean into this development for both moral and strategic ends. Ensuring that Chinese migrants have easy and reliable access to humanitarian relief would help bolster the comparative appeal of the U.S. approach to governance and undermine the legitimacy of a regime that is driving its citizens to flee. Making it easier for vetted young people and middle-class Chinese migrants to study, work, and settle in the United States would further deprive China of irreplaceable human capital necessary for its geopolitical ambitions.
In other words, the growing arrival of Chinese migrants at the southern border does have serious ramifications for U.S.-China competition—just not in the way their skeptics think.
The post Chinese Migrants Aren’t an Invading Army appeared first on Foreign Policy.
