Internet censorship creates another hurdle for Chinese migrants
Chinese social media Douyin was where migrants from China find information on how to cross into America. Then the platform cracked down on it.
(This story was made possible by my VOA colleague who found and interviewed a Chinese migrant who was willing to share his story.)
On top of physical danger, lack of resources, language barriers and the status of being undocumented, Chinese migrants who trek through South America to enter the United States have been facing an invisible hurdle: internet censorship.
For the past few years, social media platform Douyin, the Chinese version of the short video sharing app TikTok, was a gathering place for those who aspire to migrate to the US through Zouxian (走线), or trail walking, which refers to crossing into the southern border of the United States by way of Southern American countries and Mexico. People shared valuable tips and knowledge of Zouxian and documented their own journeys on the platform. Group chats were created and communities were formed.
But since last year, the platform has been quietly cracking down on Zouxian content, shutting down group chats and suspending influencial users.
China’s internet firewall has prevented most social media users from accessing sites like Facebook, YouTube and X. To many migrants, Douyin was the biggest and maybe the only source of information on Zouxian.
Migrants used Douyin to prepare for traveling
At first, Yang Yinhua had no idea what the word Zouxian means.
Last summer, he was introduced to the phrase while reading news on the internet about how dangerous it could be. He tried to look it up on China’s biggest search engine Baidu but couldn’t find much useful information. In August, a netizen he had recently befriended invited him to join a group chat on Douyin. That’s where everything changed.
Discussion in the group chat revolved around one thing: Zouxian. Group members shared information and tips about how to successfully migrate to other countries, including the US. Yang said that the chat quickly reached the maximum number of participants, which was 500. It was one of the six Zouxian group chats created by a user called “Yunfei” (云飞). Yang said the number of users in all six chats maxed up within weeks.
Yang, who is 31 years old, came from the ancient city of Zhoukou in the northern province of Henan. In 2023, he was working at an iPhone factory in Kunshan of Jiangsu Province. China’s economy hasn’t been doing well and he was feeling it. He said that many people he knew in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan, were in debt. Some were only able to pay off their credit card balance by borrowing from somewhere else.
“Nobody was living a decent life during the last five or six years,” he said. “The ruling party wasn’t making the people feel happy like it used to.”
But what really fueled his decision to leave China was the sudden death of his mother. Second year into the Covid-19 pandemic, China implemented strict policies on traveling. So Yang and his sister, both of whom were working in other cities, decided not to go back home for Spring Festival. They missed what would have been their last chance to see their mother.
“My mom died alone,” Yang said. “When her body was found, it was already stiff.”
Yang said China’s Covid policy was responsible for his mother’s death.
After joining the group chat on Douyin, Yang pored over the information people shared there about Zouxian. Every day the group chat produced as many as over a thousand messages. Yang read every single one of them, learning about passport, visa, how and when to purchase plane tickets, which cities to transfer at.
Some of the very valuable information was shared by “Yunfei”, creator of the chat, whose identity and location nobody in the group knew.
“Me and a couple of members in the group felt like he was a saint,” Yang said. “It might sound a bit exaggerating, but that’s how we described him.”
Other than what was shared in the group chats, Douyin’s signature technology---its algorithm---was able to keep pushing Zouxian content to those who searched for it.
“What Douyin does with its feed is really good,” Yang said. “We were able to use it effectively. Many of us gained knowledge (of Zouxian) through Douyin.”
He added that they had much more freedom discussing Zouxian related topics on Douyin than on WeChat, which Yang said had way tighter censorship on these discussions.
When Yang started using Douyin in August 2023, he knew almost nothing about Zouxian. By October, he already made a plan to travel to the US via Turkey, Ecuador, and the US-Mexico border.
He arrived in America in early December with his sister. He now lives in California and works at a warehouse.
Yang and people in his group chat were far from being alone in using Douyin to travel. Reuters reported last year that many Chinese migrants trying to enter the US southern border said they found out how to do so on Douyin.
Censorship soon followed
By the time Yang was about to leave China, he started noticing elevated censorship on Douyin that targeted Zouxian content. Yang and others in the group chat had to invent new words to continue discussions because the platform kept censoring certain key words they had used.
I did some testing on Douyin and found that “Zouxian” has been put under a strict censorship. Search results for locations like “Ecuador”, “Guatemala” and “Panama”, where Chinese migrants travel through regularly, didn’t show anything related to Zouxian, either.
Users who shared Zouxian content on the platform were targeted, too. By the end of Octorber, “Yunfei” had deleted all Zouxian videos he previously posted, according to Yang. Not long after, “Yunfei” was suspended.
The group chat Yang was in was shut down. Users in the chat could no longer post new information.
According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 37,000 migrants from the People’s Republic of China were apprehended at the southern border in 2023. Their journeys were far from smooth sailings. In March, the bodies of eight Chinese migrants were found on a beach in southern Mexico after the boat they were on was capsized.
Wang Yaqiu, director of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan at human rights organization Freedom House in Washington DC, told me that the phenomenon of Zouxian reflect many Chinese people’s dissatisfaction with Beijing, which she thinks can partly explain Douyin’s crackdown.
“I think the CCP is embarrassed that so many Chinese people want to flee the country, even through such risky means. It exposes CCP propaganda about the Chinese economy and how good people's life are to be a sham,” she wrote.
ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin, hasn’t replied to my request for comments.
On TikTok, the international version of Douyin, search result of the Chinese phrase “Zouxian” has been blocked.
“No results found,” the app says, adding that the phrase “may be associated with behavior or content that violated our guidelines.”
According to TikTok’s Community Guidelines, content considered harmful is not allowed on the platform, which includes hate speech, sexual violence, harassment, and human exploitations, among others.
“We do not allow human exploitation, including trafficking and smuggling,” the Guideline says.
The blocking of “Zouxian” by TikTok was discovered by internet users as early as January.
As soon as he left China, Yang stopped using Douyin to search for Zouxian content. He quickly moved over to chatting app Telegraph and joined a group chat also set up by “Yunfei”.
But by the time Yang entered the chat, “Yunfei” had already left. Two weeks ago, Yang said, the chat was taken over by what he called “little pink patriots”, a nickname for those propagating pro-Beijing messages.