In February 2024, a former journalist with a regional Chinese state-run newspaper left the country with his family of five to join the “run” movement — a mass exodus of people from China following the lifting of pandemic restrictions in late 2022, many of them seeking a life free from ruling Chinese Communist Party surveillance and control.
The journalist, who hails from the eastern province of Shandong and who gave only the pseudonym Xiao Wu for fear of reprisals, told RFA’s Newcomers podcast about the widespread censorship, police harassment and political warnings that led him to bring his young family to make the hazardous border crossing from Mexico to seek political asylum in the United States.