BEIJING – “Requirements for emigrating to Canada”: + 2846%. “Where is it worth going abroad?”: + 2455%. “What is the best country to emigrate?”: + 1294%. Between the end of March and mid-April, since the Party decided to lock Shanghai and started ordering lockdowns in dozens of other cities to “win the war” against the virus, the online search curve relating to the the “emigration” argument has made a dizzying leap upwards. More and more Chinese are taking into consideration what for many, until recently, was unthinkable: leaving their country. But it won’t be that easy.
April 3rd. The Party announces that “we must strictly adhere to the zero-Covid policy”. That day on WeChat, the most popular social network here, discussions on emigration increased by 440%: 50 million searches and shares, one in twenty users. Two weeks later, on April 15, the figure is 72 million. To escape the long eye of state censorship, on Weibo – the Chinese Twitter – between March and April there are almost 80,000 posts with the character? (“Wet”), but which transliterated is written and pronounced “rùn”, like the English to run, to escape. However, with the increasing research, the argument for the Party has become sensitive. The online trend analysis tools on the topic managed by Mandarin Internet giants such as Baidu or Weibo itself are no longer available. And you can also understand this by trying to call some immigration agency. Repubblica contacted five of them, between Beijing and Shanghai, all giving the same answer: “We can’t talk”.
Ailin is 30 years old, works in marketing and lives in Shanghai. And he’s applying to emigrate to Singapore, at the location his company has there. “I had thought about leaving already at the end of last year. I have already lived abroad and I like to experience different cultures and lifestyles. But I hadn’t given myself a specific timing. But then I took Covid and experienced the Shanghai situation firsthand: the way the country manages the pandemic and treats people made me speed up the process. I don’t want to live in a country where I am forced into a facility just because I am sick. I feel that now (and I got it on my skin) basic freedoms are missing. I don’t feel safe here, ”she says, making sure we use an invented name for her. And the necessary documents? “I am about to start the paperwork, but I think it will be difficult to get the documents now as all the offices are closed due to the lockdown. It will take a while to get the visa but I am confident ”. Ailin is not alone. “Many of my closest friends, Chinese, are thinking about it. But leaving is not an option for everyone: certainly those who have the necessary resources want to do it. Many have small children and are worried about their future. The government is starting to limit movement both outside and inside the country: what if in the future it decides to close the door completely? We must leave as soon as possible ”.
For those who are thinking of leaving, however, the biggest obstacle is the passport. Yes, because since the beginning of the pandemic, many Chinese have never been renewed. Since 2020, the National Immigration Administration has stopped issuing travel documents for “non-essential reasons.” The renewal or issuance is limited only to those with study or work reasons. And last week the same Administration has further reiterated that “non-essential” exits from the country will be “strictly limited”, to prevent people from bringing the virus home once they return. In the first half of 2021, China issued only 335,000 passports, 2% of the total for the same period of 2019. According to some posts on social media – the authenticity of which the Republic is not able to verify – some Chinese returning from abroad would have had the corners of their passport cut off, making it no longer valid.
“It is no longer just foreigners, but the Chinese themselves who no longer accept all these rules on quarantines and lockdowns. It is no longer possible to plan life ”, says an Italian manager for over ten years in Beijing. “Among those who want to leave are couples without children who have no financial problems, but also people who work for state-owned companies. They are afraid to say it but they want to do it. It is above all the younger group that is the most angry. Until seven or eight years ago, today’s thirty-year-olds were used to being, in quotation marks, free. Traveling, going to America, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Australia to study. In their own way they felt free. Now they can’t. And they don’t accept it ”. Exams for students applying to study at universities abroad were canceled last week, a move that will further limit outbound flows.
Who left “at the right time”, at the beginning of the pandemic, is Xiaofeng, 56, an IT entrepreneur, who with his wife Liu left Beijing in the winter of 2020. Destination Valencia.
“Otherwise, like some of my friends in China, whose companies are bankrupt or on the verge of closure, I would have been reduced to taking antidepressants like them for a long time,” he says over the phone from Spain. “The political situation hasn’t been good for years already,” he says, referring to the amendment to the Constitution that allows President Xi Jinping to remain in office potentially for life. “All the efforts we have made in recent decades, from hard study to hard work, have been made to have more freedom. It is time to find a better place where we can enjoy more freedom.” these two years he has had to undergo closures, restrictions, lack of food or access to urgent medical care, we feel lucky “, explains his wife while showing the photos of the last holiday she took in April in the Netherlands.” We work as usual and we manage to travel: unimaginable now in China. “” Ideology always has priority and everything is at the service of politics, so it is no longer important whether the control of the pandemic is in accordance with science or not, “continues Xiaofeng. “If one day the doors of our country were to close and I had to choose where to stay, I would have no doubts: outside China”.