Dewey Beach, DE, August 6, 2024 --  

Failing regimes in Cuba and Venezuela lead the world in creating refugees. Is Communist China poised to join them?

When thinking of the migration crisis at America's southern border, Venezuela and Cuba quickly come to mind.  Marxist economic policies have yielded economic misery and political repression in both countries, causing a mass exodus to the United States.  640,000 people of Venezuelan in origin now live in the America, the vast majority coming since the socialist takeover 25 years ago.¹  Meanwhile over 200,000 Cubans arrived in 2023 and 2022 joining a two million strong diaspora.²

With Cuba's Communist Party firmly entrenched and allegations that the Venezuelan regime has stolen yet another election, the situation looks unlikely to improve.  On the contrary, signs are that a third Marxist regime is starting to bleed refugees towards America's southern border: Communist China.

In the past 18 months, Customs and Border Protection has recorded 55,000 encounters with  migrants from the People's Republic of China.³ This new immigration pattern  marks a stark change from the slow but steady flow of migrants feeding Chinatowns across the US since the 1980s.  While prior migrants quietly overstayed tourist visas or came as students, the new Chinese migrants desperately trek across the Panamanian jungle shoulder-to-shoulder with the Venezuelans. 

Communist dictator Xi Jinping's crackdown on both dissent and economic liberties give ample reasons for migrants' asylum claims.  But oppression is typically not the primary motivation of migrants.  It is the lack of opportunity for unemployed young people.

Anti-immigrant politicians in America (including former President Trump) have outlandishly suggested these migrants might be Communist agents.  Are spies on a government payroll likely to use smugglers to guide them on  a deadly trek across the Panamanian jungle with the desperately poor masses from Haiti and Venezuela?  The determination required to make this trip speaks to the economic desperation that is clearly hitting some segments of mainland Chinese society.

One factor in the surge is  the rise of Chinese-run "snakehead" smuggling networks advertising their services on social media to several poor countries shedding migrants.⁴ Given that these Chinese smugglers already organize routes through Panama's  Darien Jungle, why not expand operations to target the home Chinese market?

But the fact that there is a market at all speaks volumes about the failed economic policies of Xi Jinping.  China's  dictator has mad  an about-face from the business-friendly policies of his predecessors.  Starting in the early 1990s, Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin introduced a "socialist market economy"  that opened up China and drove it to fabulous rates of economic growth.  It lifted hundreds of millions from poverty and became the dominant manufacturing engine of the world under Jiang's successor Hu Jintao.

Xi Jinping's rule has been a horrific turn for the worse.  He has arrested and subjugated business tycoons like Jack Ma, donned a Mao suit at a Communist Party conference, ended liberty and the rule of law in Hong Kong, aggressively bullied neighbors in the South China Sea and pursued a policy of military confrontation with Taiwan and the United States.  Spooked business partners in Europe and the United States have responded by "de-risking" -- seeking to reduce their reliance on Chinese manufacturing.  

The goose that laid the golden egg is dead at the hands of Chairman Xi.  A surge in refugees is the natural outcome.

While the migration trend is worrying, it is important to note that numbers of Chinese migrants are significantly smaller than the numbers coming from other despotic states like Venezuela and Cuba.  This is true both in absolute numbers and even more so as a percentage of the population of the country of origin.  If migration levels from Cuba continue at 200,000 per year, nobody will be left on the island in just 50 years.

The same can not be said of China for which 40,000 migrants to the USA is a drop in the bucket of its population of 1.4 billion.  But nobody knows whether this rate might grow in coming years.

Given China's much larger  population, the migration surge is bound to have more impact on America in the near-term.  But that doesn't mean there will be no impact on China.   Every mainland Chinese national that escapes the dictatorship for freedom is a voice that can speak the truth to his countrymen back in home.  Whether their path to America is legal or not, freedom-loving Americans would be wise to welcome them.

Related Web Columns:

Political Roadblocks, July 9, 2024

Democracy's Hairy Edge, January 23, 2024

Breathtaking Determination, October 26, 2021

Notes:

1. NBC News, Can Venezuela's political crisis affect migration and U.S. politics? August 2, 2024

2. Politico, Record-breaking numbers of Cuban migrants entered the U.S. in 2022-23 , October 24, 2023

3. Washington Post, Chinese Migrants are Entering the United States in Record Numbers, Part of a Historic Global Surge Across the Mexico Border, June 29 2024

4. NBC News, 'The World Has Changed': WeChat, Snakeheads and the New Era of Global Migration, May 4, 2024