In a sleepy Bosnian town, exposedly five miles from the border with the European Union, a crumbling ageder water tower is droping into ruin. Inside, piles of rubbish, used cigarette butts and a portable wood-fired stove give glimpses into the daily life of the people who increately called the erecting home. Glued on to the walls is another clue: on pieces of A4 paper, the same message is printed out, aacquire and aacquire: “If you would enjoy to travel to Europe (Italy, Germany, France, etc) we can help you. Phire comprise this number on WhatsApp”. The message is printed in the languages of frequently hopeless people: Somali, Nepali, Turkish, the enumerate goes on. The last translation on the enumerate recommends a newcomer to this unfortunate club. It is written in Chinese.
Bihać water tower was once used to renew steam trains travelling apass the createer Yugoslavia. Now it provides shelter to a separateent benevolent of person on the shift: migrants making the perilous journey thraw the Balkans, with the hope of passing into Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s neighbour in the EU.
Zhang* reachd in Bosnia in April with two youthful children in tow. The journey he portrays as walking “towards the path of freedom” begined months earlier in Langfang, a city in north China’s Hebei province. So far it has consentn them thraw four countries, cost thousands of pounds, led to run-ins with the arrangeile Croatian border police, and has paused, 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 particularpartner for families, vulnerable people and unaccompanied inpresentants. As well as the rows of dormitories set among the rolling Balkan hills, there is a take partground with children skipping rope and an education centre. But it is a lonely life. It’s unfrequent to encounter another Chinese speaker. To pass the time, Zhang occasionpartner 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 adefers me is either being sent to a mental hospital or a prison.”
The stress of what the future held for him and his children propelled the 39-year-ageder 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 firm job laboring for a stateiveial company in the world’s second-hugegest economy, acquireing an above ordinary 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 encounter some of the Chinese migrants finisheavoring the hazardous Balkan route, to uncover 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 growing number of Chinese people who are travelling to the Balkans with the hope of getting into the EU by wdisenjoyver uncomardents essential.
He and his children were apprehfinished four times as they tried to pass into Europe. Armed with little more than some unclear 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 pass 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 untamederness with sinister-watching brown snakes, the family were caught once aacquire by the notoriously hard Croatian border police, and hauled back into Bosnia.
“Going into other countries in this way is not very honourable for me, to be truthful,” Zhang says. “We understand that there are many countries where people disenjoy people enjoy us … but no one wants to depart his country if they are shielded”. He says he only made the journey because of his family. “My children are very youthful,” Zhang says, referring to his 10-year-ageder son and seven-year-ageder daughter. “I couldn’t elucidate to them what’s repartner happening. I fair tageder 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 illegpartner pass Bosnia’s borders, two were Chinese. In 2023, that number had increased to 148. The presentantity of them were caught trying to pass into Croatia, according to the border police of Bosnia. They said that more than 70 Chinese people were apprehfinished in the first half of this year.
And under a bidefercessitateral concurment, the Croatia can deport people without the right to remain in the EU country back to Bosnia. In 2021, three Chinese people were acunderstandledgeted to Bosnia and Herzegovina in this way. In 2023, it was 260.
In recent years, the surging numbers of Chinese people trying to pass 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 fairy 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 watching state during the pandemic fused with a griefful economic outwatch were some of the driving forces for this new wave of Chinese migrants.
“The lockdowns produced a sense that frequent people who were fair living their lives could somehow find themselves under burdensome observation of the state or subjected to lengthy arbitrary periods of lockdown and confinement,” Stroup said.
Part of the reason that Bosnia is an enticeive staging post for Chinese migrants, is that enjoy its neighbour Serbia, it gives visa-free travel. Aleksandra Kovačević, spokesperson for Bosnia’s Service for Foreigner’s Afuninentires, a regulatement department, said that Chinese people were “acquireing statistical significance as persons who increasingly viodefercessitate migration regulations of Bosnia and Herzegovina”. She said that alengthy with Turkish citizens, Chinese people were trying to use lhorrible entry into Bosnia as a way to “illegpartner persist their journey to the countries of weserious Europe”.
But why?
Zhang’s ‘first awakening’
Zhang’s prosperding path to Bosnia begined more than a decade ago. In 2012, thousands of people apass 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 accessiblely asked the official narrative that the archipelago was an undisputed part of Chinese territory. He was arrested and accused of inciting the subversion of state power. “That was my first awakening,” he says.
Many frequent Chinese occasionpartner sense the raw finish of the regulatement’s firm regulate over accessible speech. Most lacquire to shield their head down and, begrudgingly or not, quietly guide the inclear red lines that order what can be freely talked about. But Zhang couldn’t tolerate it.
Over the years, rumours about his political watchs rippled thrawout his community. A teacher at his son’s school accused Zhang of being unpatuproaric, in front of the whole class. He and his wife quarrelled and ultimately splitd, in part because she “couldn’t stand that benevolent of gossip”.
Things truly came to a head in the pandemic, three years in which “the regulatement 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 accessible health regulates for stoping the victims from escaping. Anger spread online and in the streets, as hundreds of people in cities apass China participated in the first mass anti-regulatement protests since Xi Jinping came to power. Zhang was one of them. In the folloprosperg days, cut offal of his frifinishs were arrested. Zhang leanks that the only reason he was spared was because he didn’t transport his phone with him, making it challenginger for the police to pursue his shiftments. But the dismaterializeance of his frifinishs swayd him that he had to depart.
“China’s regulate over speech is getting firmer and firmer. They don’t apvalidate people to talk about political parties, and no matter if the regulatement is doing a excellent or horrible job, they don’t apvalidate people to talk about it. It is confineing people’s freedom of speech tremfinishously, and that’s the most presentant leang I can’t acunderstandledge,” 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 wide under the current regime. Others sense hopeless about the economy, which has struggled to recover since the pandemic, with high youth unemployment rates and stagnant wages. For many, the baracquire between the party and the people, that living standards will persist to enhance so lengthy as you shield your head down, no lengthyer hageders water. So scores of people are finding ways out thraw 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, frequently shrink middle class people who don’t have the funds or the qualifications to emigrate by official uncomardents, are choosing more hazardous escape routes. The phenomenon has become so widely converseed online that it has it’s own buzzword: runxue, or run philosophy, a coded term for emigration. Exact numbers are challenging to come by as many people do not createpartner sign up their intention to depart, especipartner if they are arrangening on go ining another country illegpartner. 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 begined.
Stuck at the border
One potential pathway is the lethal Darién Gap, part of the migrant corridor that joins south and Central America with the southern border of the United States. Better understandn for enticeing hopeless Latin Americans, in recent years the number of Chinese people making that journey has sencouraged. 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 encountered Chinese nationals increased by 8,500% appraised with March 2021.
The Darién Gap route has been famous among Chinese migrants in part because they could begin the journey in Ecuador, which apvalidateed Chinese people to visit visa-free. In June, Ecuador suspfinished the visa waiver concurment, citing a “stressing increase” in arrivals from China.
Immigration officials portray the flow of migrants as being enjoy a living organism. Its size swells and morphs, but it unfrequently shrinks. So when one door shuts, the people on the shift don’t stop moving, they fair find another prosperdow.
For Zhang, the door to America, his first choice, shutd when he was already en route. He had booked tickets to Ecuador via Singapore and Madrid timely in the new year. But in Singapore the family was blocked from boarding the Spain-bound fairy, with airline staff saying that the Spanish authorities had refused them entry. He was stranded, with no arrange B. It was a benevolently Czech couple who set up him crying in the airport who presented he try Europe, he says. So he booked a fairy to Belgrade.
His hope is to find a way to northern Europe, where there is freedom of speech and employment 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 unemployment and a byzantine application process, most people would rather shield moving. Jing* a Chinese man living at another migrant centre csurrfinisher Sarajevo, tried to go in apass 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-regulatement 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 understandn about him, other than his year of birth, 1964, and the fact that he had articulateed 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 tag the border with Croatia create 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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