Paul, an Indonesian fisherman, says he was working as a rideshare driver in the dusty streets of Kupang in West Timor when he came across half a dozen Chinese men on the side of the road. They were wet up to their waist, carrying a backpack each, and spoke no Indonesian.
“They had walked from the beach, from the mangrove forest to the main road. They said they had difficulty with their boat engine,” Paul recalls. They asked for directions to a nearby hotel … and went on their way. Paul, a former people smuggler from Rote Island, called the police. “I used to bring people like this.”
Five of the group had flown into Bali on tourist visas and travelled to South Sulawesi, allegedly to meet people smugglers who would take them by boat to Australia, a few hundred miles away. But not far from Kupang the boat ran into trouble, a court would later hear. The passengers were dropped off and they waded ashore, then made their way through a coastal village to the main road where they met Paul.
They are not the only Chinese people to have passed through this small city in remote Indonesia, suspected of looking for a fisherman to take them across the sea.
The men are allegedly among a growing number of Chinese fleeing their home country, where rising authoritarianism under the rule of Xi Jinping and the difficulties of a faltering economy has prompted some people to look for a way out. The phenomenon has become so widely discussed online that it has its own nickname: runxue, or run philosophy, a coded term for emigration.
Some are relocating on student or business visas, joining growing diaspora communities in places like Japan or Thailand. But tens of thousands of others who don’t qualify or have the resources for such pathways are fleeing in other unconventional and often dangerous ways, known as zouxian, or walking the line.
Most head for the US, trekking from South America through the hostile jungle of the Darian Gap. In September the Guardian revealed a small but growing number were also flying into the Balkans to find smugglers to take them to Germany. Now, another emerging high-stakes escape route has been revealed, through the Indonesian archipelago to a smuggler’s boat destined for Australia.
The numbers are a drop in the ocean compared with the masses of asylum seekers fleeing conflict and deprivation around the world, and these Chinese migrants in Indonesia are treading a path well worn by people escaping wartorn countries like Afghanistan and Myanmar. But experts say the arrival of Chinese people on this route signals growing discontent at home.
Some Chinese migrants in the US and Europe have said tightening restrictions on political, religious and social freedoms during Xi’s rule led them to flee. Others cited stifling public health policies during the pandemic, and the economic downturn, housing crunch, and youth unemployment crisis that followed.
Meredith Oyen, an associate professor at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, specialising in Chinese migration, says politics and economics are push factors.
“The zero-Covid policy ended up destroying a lot of small businesses and a lot of middle class people’s economic life … The combination of that and the draconian nature of some of those policies led to frustrations and more political dissatisfactions.
“Even if you’re not driven by political repression, the experience of bankruptcy in China is political, it has more blowback on your life compared to places like the US. So it feels like if you’re just going to be languishing in China and you don’t see hope for recovery in a way that makes you a welcome member of society, you might as well risk it.”
The Guardian travelled to Indonesia to piece together the journey and find out why and how Chinese people are deciding to risk the notoriously dangerous – and usually unsuccessful – path.
‘Anyone coming with us?’
For many embarking on zouxian, their journey starts on the Chinese social media platform, Douyin. Douyin has become a common channel to recruit fellow migrants, with people openly stating that they want to smuggle themselves into Australia. Dozens of comments on these videos use cryptic terms to express their interest in joining.
Ten months ago, a 29-year-old man from Heilongjiang with the username “Tian Ci”, posted that he’d found a boat, and was looking for “sincere people to go with”. Four months ago, he commented under a Douyin ad for an Australian immigration consultant that he was ready. “Anyone coming with us?” he said.
His next stop was Bali in mid-August, where he posted a video of himself drinking beer with some Indonesian men, at Suris hotel in Kuta. A few days later he posted again: “wish you luck and wish me luck”. His IP location then switched to “unknown”.
The Chinese passengers fly in to places like Bali, Jakarta and Sulawesi on the tourist visas-on-arrival Indonesia introduced this year, or to neighbouring countries like Timor Leste, Brunei, or Malaysia, and make their way over various borders to meet smugglers for the final journey to Australia.
Smugglers told us that boats often leave from privately owned coastland in Kupang, or from Rote island where crew members have long been recruited from fishing villages. Some boats exit through Mulut Seribu, or “Thousand Mouths”, a chaotic network of islands and mangrove forests creating myriad exit routes to evade authorities.
Others said boats also leave from the sparse southern coastline between Kupang and Timor Leste, including the tiny district of Kolbano. Outside a small store at the end of the same street where the sodden migrants had trekked in from the mangroves, a group of Timorese drivers say the road to Timor Leste is well travelled by people looking to meet smuggler boats.
‘More than one group has gone this way’
The group Paul came across didn’t make it far. Their repaired boat was intercepted by authorities, and the five Chinese passengers and six crew (including one Chinese man, Jiang Xiao Jia) were arrested. Four of the passengers were deported and the crew were put on trial charged with people smuggling and visa law offences.
The Kupang court has heard allegations that the five passengers – Chen Xu, Li Ke Yang, Zhao Jin Xiang, Wang Dong Fang, and Dai Zhong Hai – paid US$5,000-$7,000 each to Jiang to be taken to Australia. They told the court they wanted to find work in Australia. Jiang, a Chinese national who police said has lived in Sulawesi for three years with his local wife and two children, denies the allegation, saying he was organising a fishing expedition.
The money is significant for those who agree to smuggle people to Australia. Rote is one of the most impoverished districts of Indonesia, its people relying on farming and fishing for survival. Paul says he was recently offered 25m rupiah (US$1,560/£1,200) and a boat to take a group, but he refused, saying he has a family now and doesn’t want to risk a fourth stint in Australian detention.
On a warm afternoon in Papela, a quiet fishing village on the eastern end of Rote, Abdullah Pello is sitting on his front porch with a small crowd of people smugglers and a local police officer.
Pello, who says he hasn’t run a smuggling venture in 10 years, finds the arrival of Chinese a curious development. “It used to be all Middle Eastern people,” he says. “Now it’s mostly the Middle East and China.”
His neighbour, Abdul Pello, says he has encountered at least two groups of Chinese migrants, including one that paid for a boat with five outboard motors to “go fast”. Another man says that in 2023 a group of Chinese people asked him to buy a boat and meet them at Kolbano.
“I refused … They don’t let them enter,” he says referring to the Australian authorities. But he thinks the boat still went, with another crew not from his village.
“More than one group has gone this way, all Chinese people. They only say they want to get to Australia.”
It is not clear how many have tried to get to Australia. Indonesian authorities did not respond to requests for information. Cases involving Chinese migrants have been reported sporadically since at least 2020. The Timorese drivers say one vessel carrying Chinese people capsized near Kolbano earlier this year, killing all but one passenger, but the Guardian was unable to verify the story.
In March 2024, Australian media reported 15 Chinese people flew into Bali on tourist visas, then went to Kupang and were reported to police after they asked fishermen how to reach Australia. They were returned home, with police saying they could not detain people for just asking questions.
In April a group of 10 Chinese people walked on to an Australian airbase in northern Western Australia, claiming asylum after travelling from Indonesia. In May, two were reportedly turned around at sea near Darwin. Late last month a group of nine reportedly landed near the Coburg Peninsula in Arnhem Land. That came just weeks after four Chinese men were found on nearby Croker Island. The men were dropped off by a long shallow fishing boat, and were discovered “stressed and shaking” by Indigenous rangers patrolling for illegal fishermen. Shown a photo, the men on Rote identify the boat as a Sulawesi fishing vessel, painted black for either people smuggling or illegal fishing.
Further investigation has found that the four men, at least one from Louhe city in Henan, very likely left from or near Kupang.
Based on interviews with local people who recognised a photo of two of the men, the Guardian believes they were part of a group of six who stayed at the Hotel Winslow in early November for two nights. They booked on the Indonesian Traveloka app under false names, and slept in room 115, ordering in food before saying they were getting a bus to Timor Leste.
In Australia they told the Garngi rangers – who gave first aid and sheltered them in their remote community until authorities arrived – that they feared persecution in China and wanted to claim asylum.
“The local community and traditional owners … quickly realised these fellas were escaping something desperate,” Garngi ranger coordinator Bryan Macdonald says. “They all said they feared for their lives.”
Macdonald said the community wanted to know where the men were now, but they got just “standard responses” from authorities. Australian Border Force said only: “a group of unauthorised maritime arrivals” from one smuggling venture were transferred to a regional processing centre – likely Nauru – in November.
The Australian government is notoriously secretive about its highly contentious policies, refusing to discuss “on-water matters”. A 2023-24 annual report said there were “zero successful maritime people smuggling ventures”, meaning all known ventures were intercepted or its passengers captured on arrival.
‘Eventually, someone will die’
One of the biggest questions about this apparent new pathway for fleeing Chinese people is why they think it is a good idea. For more than a decade Australia has refused to resettle any asylum seekers who arrive by boat, instead sending them to draconian offshore processing centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
For Chinese migrants, Australia’s military-led policy means that successfully landing in Australia and claiming asylum automatically precludes them from being able to stay in Australia. But the alternative – sneaking in to live an undocumented life – seems impossible. Most landing points are in the most remote parts of Australia, with harsh climates, dangerous animals, and hundreds of kilometres to the nearest town or city.
“Eventually, someone will die,” the chair of the Northern Land Council, Matthew Ryan, said last month. “These poor blokes were dumped with no food or water and left to fend for themselves.”
Speaking generally, the Australian Border Force told the Guardian its tough policies show Canberra “will not tolerate Australia being targeted” by “criminal people smugglers”, who it said were selling false hope to vulnerable people for financial gain.
But people still want to make the trip.
‘I envy other people who can run’
The laneways of Ubud are a far cry from a camouflaged fishing boat on the West Timor coast. But a retired Chinese woman on holidays in Bali is well aware of the pathway. She tells the Guardian she dreams of “running”.
“I envy other people who can ‘run’ but I am not capable of doing so myself,” she says, adding that her adult children would also “run” if it weren’t so difficult, dangerous and expensive. But she says she knows many others who have.
“Some of them flee to the US, some of them make it, some of them don’t, and they share pics in the group,” she says of a dedicated WeChat group that has since been blocked. Some of the members flew to Bali and Brunei, presumably with the boat journey to Australia in mind.
She says information is usually shared in these sort of groups, using coded language to try to avoid China’s strict censorship and digital surveillance. China’s internet firewall blocks a lot of international sites and information. It is one possible explanation for why people who dream of zouxian – through Indonesia, the Darian Gap, or the Balkans – do not seem fully aware of the risks.
But she says life is getting economically, politically and socially tougher for people in China, especially for the young, and they want a way out.
“The situation [in China] was better before the pandemic, and after the pandemic they said there would be an explosion of wealth, but there was not,” she says. “The houses, the economy, and the huge amount of foreign investment left, we all know it very well … It’s just, you know, I can’t say that freely.”
China does not release statistics on people leaving, but the UN’s refugee agency – which has registered around a third of all displaced people and refugees – recorded 137,143 asylum seekers from China in 2023, five times the number registered a decade earlier at the start of Xi’s rule. By July this year it had grown to 176,239.
Two of the men Paul came across on that Kupang road are still in immigration detention. A detention centre employee tells the Guardian he has been communicating with them using Google Translate, and now they just want to go home. He says neither they nor the four others since deported have received visits from Chinese consular officials, comparing them with detainees from other countries who had been visited by ambassadors. China’s embassy did not respond to queries.
The highly publicised failed missions have not deterred everyone. Last week, a Chinese resident commented on a Douyin video about zouxian to Australia. “I’m at the end of the road. I can’t survive any more. I want to go. I want to go very much,” he said.
On another post, a Jiangsu resident replied to a video looking for people smugglers. “Sign me up for one,” he wrote.
Additional research by Elcid Domininggus Li and Fadiyah Alaidrus
