Run part one: Why are Chinese people running to Japan?

**Alice Su** (0:16)
Thank you Two years ago, at the height of the zero COVID lockdowns, the Chinese word run began trending online.

**David Rennie** (0:22)
It was being used as a kind of code because run sounds similar to the English word run.

**Alice Su** (0:29)
Netizens used this Chinese character to avoid censorship as they discussed running away from China.

**David Rennie** (0:36)
And since the lifting of zero COVID rules, some Chinese citizens have been running. They've been quietly moving to the rest of the world.

**Alice Su** (0:45)
China doesn't release emigration statistics, but according to the UN, the number of people leaving China in recent years has shot up.

**David Rennie** (0:52)
And one of the most popular destinations is Japan. This week, we're starting the first of a three-part look at some of the Chinese who have moved to Japan and what their decision to go says about the country they've left behind.

**Alice Su** (1:07)
I'm Alice Su, the Economist Senior China Correspondent, and I'm here with my co-host, David Rennie, our Beijing Bureau Chief. This week, we're asking, what is pushing Chinese people to run?

**David Rennie** (1:18)
This is Drum Tower.

**Alice Su** (1:20)
From The Economist.

**David Rennie** (1:26)
Alice, how have you been?

**Alice Su** (1:28)
Hey David, I'm well. I'm a little bit sleep deprived. I think I told you recently that we've been having a lot of earthquakes here, and one unexpected side effect is that my dog, Gary, I think has developed a little bit of anxiety. So every night when it's time to go to bed, he gets really nervous and he starts pacing around and like walking around for hours. My husband and I are sleeping with earplugs. And then other than that, we've been playing a lot of calming music for dogs all day at home.

**David Rennie** (1:55)
So poor Gary, Gary's got PTSD.

**Alice Su** (1:58)
Yeah.
But I read that dogs don't really have memory. They don't have long-term memory or much short-term memory either. So I think he should forget about it soon. But yeah, we're just waiting for the soothing music to kick in.

**David Rennie** (2:10)
I hope soothing music for dogs is less annoying than soothing music for toddlers, which I had to live through for a certain period, which is really unbearable.

**Alice Su** (2:17)
David, how are you? What's going on in Beijing?

**David Rennie** (2:19)
Alice, I've been on the road this week. Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode, but I've been in Ningxia, and I went to a small town where I think their local police had not seen many foreign journalists. They got extremely overexcited to the point that not only were a lot of people following us, but one of them, we realized, was actually wearing these funky smart glasses with a little camera embedded in them. So I think it was like, there's a foreign journalist. Alice, we get to open the secret spy cupboard of cool stuff. And so-
It's a little bit odd.

**Alice Su** (2:46)
It wasn't like those AI glasses where he looks at you and then your information will pop up on the screen. It's David Rennie.

**David Rennie** (2:53)
Who can say, but they were weird glasses and they were being very intense.

**Alice Su** (2:58)
Okay. I look forward to hearing about it.

**David Rennie** (3:01)
So Alice, I'm also really looking forward to hearing about the people that you have been meeting in Japan.

**Alice Su** (3:06)
Yeah. So I've been speaking with people who left China in the last few years for all kinds of reasons. And later in the series, we will focus on political dissidents.
But this week and next week, we're actually going to be talking about people who are not activists or dissidents. They're just ordinary people who had been making their lives and building their futures in China. But then in recent years, they made this dramatic decision to go and build their futures somewhere else.

**David Rennie** (3:31)
Going back to, I guess, the 19th century, Japan has been a big destination for Chinese workers or students and immigrants. What makes this wave different?

**Alice Su** (3:39)
Yeah, you're right, David. Actually, when you look at the visa numbers in Japan, Chinese people are ranked number one in every visa category, except for now, actually, blue collar work, and they're their number two to Vietnam. But what's really different in the last few years is there's been a huge rise in middle class, basically wealthier Chinese people who are moving to Japan mostly through these business or investment visas. Those numbers have tripled over the last decade and jumped 25% since 2020 alone.