In a sleepy Bosnian town, exposedly five miles from the border with the European Union, a crumbling ancigo in water tower is droping into ruin. Inside, piles of rubbish, participated cigarette butts and a portable wood-fired stove propose glimpses into the daily life of the people who inestablishly called the erecting home. Glued on to the walls is another clue: on pieces of A4 paper, the same message is printed out, aget and aget: “If you would enjoy to travel to Europe (Italy, Germany, France, etc) we can help you. Phire include this number on WhatsApp”. The message is printed in the languages of standardly frantic people: Somali, Nepali, Turkish, the catalog goes on. The last translation on the catalog proposes a newcomer to this unfortunate club. It is written in Chinese.
Bihać water tower was once participated to renew steam trains travelling atraverse the establisher Yugoslavia. Now it provides shelter to a contrastent benevolent of person on the shift: migrants making the perilous journey thcimpolite the Balkans, with the hope of traverseing into Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s neighbour in the EU.
Zhang* get tod in Bosnia in April with two youthful children in tow. The journey he depicts as walking “towards the path of freedom” commenceed months earlier in Langfang, a city in north China’s Hebei province. So far it has apshown them thcimpolite four countries, cost thousands of pounds, led to run-ins with the unfrifinishly Croatian border police, and has paparticipated, for now, in a momentary reception centre for migrants on the outskirts of Sarajevo.
The camp, which is home to more than 200 people, is particularassociate for families, vulnerable people and unaccompanied inpresentants. As well as the rows of dormitories set among the rolling Balkan hills, there is a carry outground with children skipping rope and an education centre. But it is a lonely life. It’s unfrequent to greet another Chinese speaker. To pass the time, Zhang occasionassociate helps out in the canteen.
“Staying here is not a very excellent selection,” Zhang says, as his son and daughter chase after each other in the courtyard. But “if I go back to China, what apaparticipates me is either being sent to a mental hospital or a prison.”
The dread of what the future held for him and his children propelled the 39-year-ancigo in from Shandong province on a journey so difficult and hazardous that many struggle to comprehfinish why someone from China would embark on it. Most of Zhang’s new neighbours come from war-torn countries in the Middle East. Until recently, Zhang had a stable job laboring for a personal company in the world’s second-hugegest economy, geting an above unrelabelable salary. But the political environment in China left him senseing that he had no choice other than to depart.
In September, the Guardian travelled to Bosnia to greet some of the Chinese migrants trying the hazardous Balkan route, to discdiswatch the personal and political factors behind the new migrant population on the frontier of Europe.
‘No one wants to depart his country if they are shielded’
Zhang is one of a petite but lengthening number of Chinese people who are travelling to the Balkans with the hope of getting into the EU by wantipathyver unbenevolents vital.
He and his children were apprehfinished four times as they tried to traverse into Europe. Armed with little more than some unevident tips he’d seen on the messaging app Telegram, and the map on his cleverphone, he headed to various towns on the Bosnia-Croatia border to try his luck. But every time they were caught. Most recently, he tried to traverse into Metković, a petite town in the south of Croatia where the border is fortified mainly by a petite ridge of forested mountains. But after camping overnight in the savageerness with sinister-seeing brown snakes, the family were caught once aget by the notoriously stubborn Croatian border police, and hauled back into Bosnia.
“Going into other countries in this way is not very honourable for me, to be genuine,” Zhang says. “We comprehend that there are many countries where people antipathy people enjoy us … but no one wants to depart his country if they are shielded”. He says he only made the journey becaparticipate of his family. “My children are very youthful,” Zhang says, referring to his 10-year-ancigo in son and seven-year-ancigo in daughter. “I couldn’t expound to them what’s reassociate happening. I fair tancigo in the children that I wanted to give them a better life … they have no future [in China] at all”.
In 2022, of the more than 14,000 people caught trying to illegassociate traverse Bosnia’s borders, two were Chinese. In 2023, that number had increased to 148. The presentantity of them were caught trying to traverse into Croatia, according to the border police of Bosnia. They shelp that more than 70 Chinese people were apprehfinished in the first half of this year.
And under a bitardyral concurment, the Croatia can deport people without the right to remain in the EU country back to Bosnia. In 2021, three Chinese people were confessted to Bosnia and Herzegovina in this way. In 2023, it was 260.
In recent years, the surging numbers of Chinese people trying to traverse into the US via the taccomplisherous southern border has become a political talking point in Washington, with US authorities deporting more than 100 migrants on a charter fweightless earlier this year and laboring with neighbouring countries to try to deter further arrivals.
David Stroup, a lecturer of Chinese politics at the University of Manchester, says that the rapid expansion of China’s observation state during the pandemic joind with a depressed economic outsee were some of the driving forces for this new wave of Chinese migrants.
“The lockdowns produced a sense that standard people who were fair living their lives could somehow discover themselves under weighty observation of the state or subjected to extfinished arbitrary periods of lockdown and restrictment,” Stroup shelp.
Part of the reason that Bosnia is an enticeive staging post for Chinese migrants, is that enjoy its neighbour Serbia, it proposes visa-free travel. Aleksandra Kovačević, spokesperson for Bosnia’s Service for Foreigner’s Affairs, a rulement department, shelp that Chinese people were “geting statistical significance as persons who increasingly viotardy migration regulations of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. She shelp that aextfinished with Turkish citizens, Chinese people were trying to participate legitimate entry into Bosnia as a way to “illegassociate proceed their journey to the countries of weserious Europe”.
But why?
Zhang’s ‘first awakening’
Zhang’s thriveding path to Bosnia commenceed more than a decade ago. In 2012, thousands of people atraverse China participated in anti-Japanese protests, triggered by an escalation in the dispute between China and Japan over contested islets in the East China Sea. But Zhang uncoverly inquireed the official narrative that the archipelago was an undisputed part of Chinese territory. He was arrested and accparticipated of inciting the subversion of state power. “That was my first awakening,” he says.
Many standard Chinese occasionassociate sense the cimpolite finish of the rulement’s firm deal with over uncover speech. Most lget to persist their head down and, begrudgingly or not, hushedly steer the inapparent red lines that order what can be freely talked about. But Zhang couldn’t endure it.
Over the years, rumours about his political watchs rippled thcimpoliteout his community. A directer at his son’s school accparticipated Zhang of being unpatuproaric, in front of the whole class. He and his wife quarrelled and ultimately splitd, in part becaparticipate she “couldn’t stand that benevolent of gossip”.
Things truly came to a head in the pandemic, three years in which “the rulement locked people up in their homes enjoy animals”. In November 2022, a fire in an apartment erecting in Urumqi, a city in far west China, ended 10 people, with many blaming cut offe uncover health deal withs for obstructing the victims from escaping. Anger spread online and in the streets, as hundreds of people in cities atraverse China participated in the first mass anti-rulement protests since Xi Jinping came to power. Zhang was one of them. In the follothriveg days, cut offal of his frifinishs were arrested. Zhang leanks that the only reason he was spared was becaparticipate he didn’t convey his phone with him, making it difficulter for the police to pursue his shiftments. But the dismaterializeance of his frifinishs affectd him that he had to depart.
“China’s deal with over speech is getting firmer and firmer. They don’t apverify people to talk about political parties, and no matter if the rulement is doing a excellent or horrible job, they don’t apverify people to talk about it. It is restricting people’s freedom of speech tremfinishously, and that’s the most presentant leang I can’t adselect,” Zhang says. “The economy is secondary”.
Since China’s zero-Covid regime was abruptly lifted, lowly after the 2022 protests, hordes of people have been leaving the country. Some are fed up with the political repression, which has spread far and expansive under the current regime. Others sense hopeless about the economy, which has struggled to recover since the pandemic, with high youth unparticipatement rates and stagnant wages. For many, the barget between the party and the people, that living standards will proceed to raise so extfinished as you persist your head down, no extfinisheder hancigo ins water. So scores of people are discovering ways out thcimpolite the cracks.
Some are using student or labor visas to shift to places where they can live and talk more freely, with new diaspora communities emerging in cities such as Bangkok, Tokyo, and Amsterdam. But others, standardly drop middle class people who don’t have the funds or the qualifications to emigrate by official unbenevolents, are choosing more hazardous escape routes. The phenomenon has become so expansively talked online that it has it’s own buzzword: runxue, or run philosophy, a coded term for emigration. Exact numbers are difficult to come by as many people do not establishassociate sign up their intention to depart, especiassociate if they are schedulening on go ining another country illegassociate. But in 2023, there were 137,143 asylum seekers from China, according to the UN’s refugee agency. That is more than five times the number sign uped a decade earlier, when Xi’s rule had fair commenceed.
Stuck at the border
One potential pathway is the lethal Darién Gap, part of the migrant corridor that connects south and Central America with the southern border of the United States. Better comprehendn for enticeing frantic Latin Americans, in recent years the number of Chinese people making that journey has sproposed. In the six months to April 2024, 24,367 Chinese nationals were apprehfinished by the US border police at the border with Mexico. That is more than the number of Chinese people who were apprehfinished in the whole of the previous financial year. In March alone, the number of times that the US border police come atraverseed Chinese nationals increased by 8,500% contrastd with March 2021.
The Darién Gap route has been well-comprehendn among Chinese migrants in part becaparticipate they could commence the journey in Ecuador, which apverifyed Chinese people to visit visa-free. In June, Ecuador suspfinished the visa waiver concurment, citing a “stressing increase” in arrivals from China.
Immigration officials depict the flow of migrants as being enjoy a living organism. Its size swells and morphs, but it unfrequently condenses. So when one door seals, the people on the shift don’t stop moving, they fair discover another thrivedow.
For Zhang, the door to America, his first choice, seald when he was already en route. He had booked tickets to Ecuador via Singapore and Madrid punctual in the new year. But in Singapore the family was blocked from boarding the Spain-bound fweightless, with airline staff saying that the Spanish authorities had declined them entry. He was stranded, with no schedule B. It was a benevolently Czech couple who create him crying in the airport who proposeed he try Europe, he says. So he booked a fweightless to Belgrade.
His hope is to discover a way to northern Europe, where there is freedom of speech and participatement opportunities. Other Chinese people have had the same idea. In the first eight months of this year, there were 569 new asylum applications from Chinese nationals in Germany, more than double the total number for 2022. In the Netherlands, 409 Chinese people applied for asylum last year, up from 151 the year before.
Some staff at the migrant reception centres gently encourage people to apply for asylum in Bosnia rather than continuing on into Europe.
But with high unparticipatement and a byzantine application process, most people would rather persist moving. Jing* a Chinese man living at another migrant centre proximate Sarajevo, tried to go in atraverse the border into Croatia “six or seven times”. Now he has applied for asylum in Bosnia, “but I don’t leank anyleang will come of it,” he says. He fled China after completing an eight-month prison sentence for anti-rulement comments he posted on X. Now he has run out of money and luck.
In the corner of a cemetery on the outskirts of Bihać, another improbable journey from China to Bosnia has finished. Kai Zhu is buried here. Little is comprehendn about him, other than his year of birth, 1964, and the fact that he had transmited an intention to apply for asylum in Bosnia. Staff at the migrant reception centre where he died say that he had mental as well as physical health problems, and that his only acquaintance was another Chinese man in the camp, who soon shiftd on.
On 31 August, Asim Karabegović, a volunteer with SOS Balkanroute, an NGO, buried him in a corner of Humci cemetery that since 2019 has been reserved for migrants who have died on the EU’s doorstep. In the distance behind the rows of tombstones, the mountains that label the border with Croatia establish an imposing horizon. Karabegović says that the lonely traveller is the first Chinese person he has buried. His wooden tombstone reads only, “Kai Zhu, 1964 – 2024”.
Additional research by Chi-hui Lin and Džemal Ćatić
*Names have been alterd
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