Every new year Dan Wang, a technology analyst with an East Asia-based economics research firm and a gifted observer of contemporary China, writes a long, reflective letter about the year just past, mixing analysis with personal experience.
But after years of Zero Covid policy, with China’s economy disappointing and its political culture constricting, Wang writes that it’s increasingly “evolved to mean emigrating from China altogether.”The lucky escapees are the ones who can move legally to Europe or America.
The boldest are the ones traveling to Latin America and braving the Darien Gap to reach Mexico and then the United States; the migrant surge at our southern border, Wang notes, now includes thousands of Chinese nationals each month.
He came away from the experience feeling a bit more optimistic about China’s uncertain future.
“The China of the future will not look like the China ruled by old men today,” he writes, and some of the creative Chinese kids hanging out in Thailand may “do good things for the China they’ll one day inherit.”
Persons:
Dan Wang, Zero, Wang, it’s, ”
Locations:
East Asia, China, Europe, America, Darien, Mexico, United States, Singapore, Japan, Thailand