The moment that my friend decided she wanted to leave China came one day in 2018, on a busy street in Beijing.
A born-and-bred Beijinger with a well-paying job at an international company, she was riding in a taxi when she saw a man lying at a bus stop, apparently having a seizure. Several people stood nearby, but no one checked on him. My friend felt compelled to get out of the taxi and called an ambulance. During the roughly 15 minutes that she waited, many people passed, but no one stopped. A boy walking by asked his father, “Dad, what is happening to him?” His father hurried him away and told him not to meddle in other people’s business.
The moment that my friend decided she wanted to leave China came one day in 2018, on a busy street in Beijing.
A born-and-bred Beijinger with a well-paying job at an international company, she was riding in a taxi when she saw a man lying at a bus stop, apparently having a seizure. Several people stood nearby, but no one checked on him. My friend felt compelled to get out of the taxi and called an ambulance. During the roughly 15 minutes that she waited, many people passed, but no one stopped. A boy walking by asked his father, “Dad, what is happening to him?” His father hurried him away and told him not to meddle in other people’s business.
The next day, she began looking for ways to leave and eventually applied for a transfer to one of the company’s U.S. offices.
Of course, not everyone in China would react this way. There are plenty of tales of strangers selflessly coming to the aid of others. But I have heard enough stories like the one told by my friend, who now lives in Washington, D.C., to say that the indifference and mistrust pervading public life play a significant role in some people’s decision to leave—even when they have privileged and prosperous lives in China.
News about China’s dominance in clean energy and electric vehicles, along with its advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, can make the country sound like the obvious place for ambitious Chinese elites to thrive. Carefully selected videos of gleaming cities, efficient delivery networks, and rapidly developing industries project the image of a society hurtling toward a bright future.
Meanwhile, state propaganda portrays the United States as a declining empire beset by police violence, crime, and racism. The contrast is not entirely invented: Whenever I am stuck on yet another delayed Amtrak train, I think about how much faster and more punctual the journey would be in China.
- Trains move along the tracks at Union Station in Washington on Nov. 9, 2021.
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An aerial view of sleek high-speed trains parked on parallel tracks at night, with red lights glowing on their ends. - An aerial photo of high-speed trains at Nanjing South Railway Station in Nanjing, China, on June 30.
And yet, people still want to leave. The desire became so widespread that internet users coined the term runxue—“runology,” or the study of how to “run” from China—in the early 2020s. When I ask my Chinese friends why they moved to the United States or other Western countries, few begin with “freedom” and “democracy.” After all, most people are not preoccupied with politics. Instead, they mention small experiences: strangers who smile at them or offer assistance; neighbors who greet and socialize with one another; and professional relationships that do not depend on deciphering hidden motives and cultivating personal connections.
Distrust among strangers has long been a feature of Chinese society. Studies show that people often feel strong obligations toward family, friends, and other people within their personal circles while extending markedly weaker trust to unfamiliar people. But this does not mean that Chinese people lack compassion. Periodic nationwide uproars over the mistreatment of the vulnerable often reveal precisely the opposite.
Protesters demand justice for the dog Wang Wang in London on Aug. 1. Vuk Valcic/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Last month, the torture and killing of Wang Wang, a stray dog, by a group of boys in Guangdong province provoked widespread grief and outrage. People raised money, purchased billboards condemning animal cruelty, and demanded stronger animal welfare protections. A similar outpouring of concern occurred in 2022, when a video showing a mother of eight confined by the neck in a freezing shed in Jiangsu province went viral. Millions demanded to know who she was, whether she had been trafficked, and why local authorities had failed to protect her.
Yet compassion expressed collectively often does not translate into helping a stranger face to face. When confronted with someone in distress, many people hesitate—because they fear being deceived or exploited.
Consider pengci, or “touching porcelain”—the practice of staging or exaggerating an accident to extort compensation. Perhaps the most influential case was that of Peng Yu in 2007. Peng, a young man in Nanjing, said he had helped an elderly woman who had fallen near a bus stop, but the woman accused him of knocking her down, and a court ordered him to pay compensation. In the following years, numerous stories, often with murky details, circulated about alleged good Samaritans falsely accused by the people they had assisted.
Public anxiety over the risks of helping strangers became so widespread that, in 2017, the government adopted a national good Samaritan provision shielding people from civil liability for harm inadvertently caused while voluntarily providing emergency assistance. Local governments have also offered financial rewards and official honors to those recognized for “acting courageously for a just cause” (jianyi yongwei). National ceremonies celebrate good Samaritans, while official campaigns urge citizens to “show compassion” (xian aixin) and spread “positive energy”(zheng nengliang).
These measures can be helpful, but it is hard to manufacture care and trust through slogans, prizes, and televised ceremonies. Stories of help to others bringing negative consequences spread rapidly because they touch a fear that remains deeply rooted. In 2023, for example, a Shanghai man surnamed Chai stopped an elderly woman from falling backward on a subway escalator. She escaped injury, but he fractured his heel, incurred medical expenses, and missed three weeks of work. When local authorities sought to recognize him for bravery, the woman refused to confirm that he had rescued her. He ultimately sued her to obtain compensation.
Real trust in society can grow only when rules are predictable and applied equally, wrongdoing can be exposed, and perpetrators are held accountable. It requires confidence that, when disputes arise, the police and courts will pursue the truth rather than protect the powerful and well-connected or suppress embarrassing stories. That confidence is missing under the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rule, where preserving social stability takes precedence over justice, political connections can buy impunity, and the party itself stands above the law.
Real trust also requires a free civil society. As Robert Putnam famously observed, neighborhood groups, charities, professional associations, women’s organizations, and religious communities give strangers opportunities to connect, cooperate, and care for one another. Yet the CCP regards such independent organizations as a threat.
Changsha Funeng founder Cheng Yuan (right) and his wife, Shi Minglei (left), in an undated photo. Shi Minglei
Changsha Funeng, for example, was an organization that advocated for migrant workers and people facing discrimination because of disabilities and chronic illnesses. In 2019, authorities shut it down and arrested its founder Cheng Yuan, later sentencing him to five years in prison for “subversion.” Across China, independent organizations serving vulnerable communities have been shuttered or forced under party control.
In the cases of both the stray dog Wang Wang and the chained woman, rather than allowing public compassion to develop into sustained solidarity with the vulnerable, authorities censored discussions, removed petitions, and obstructed independent efforts to investigate the cases or advocate for change.
To encourage socially approved behavior and discourage misconduct, authorities instead have increasingly turned to surveillance technology. China has built the world’s most extensive surveillance apparatus, with facial recognition cameras blanketing streets and public transportation while police collect phone, biometric, and other personal data. Yet while cameras can help deter people from staging a pengci scam and reassure good Samaritans that they can prove their innocence if falsely accused, they cannot build trust between strangers. And the same surveillance system that watches criminals also watches human rights activists, journalists, and religious believers.
Surveillance cameras are seen near a portrait of Mao Zedong in Beijing on May 15.Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
By nearly eliminating civil society, the CCP has helped create an increasingly atomized social world. People inhabit crowded cities and communicate constantly through digital platforms, yet they often feel alienated and powerless inside. They may care about an abused woman, a tortured animal, or a persecuted neighbor, yet feel that there is little that they can do. Over time, helplessness can become indifference. People avert their eyes, mind their own business, and teach their children to do the same.
The CCP can make daily life efficient, orderly, and convenient—at least for the urban middle classes. It can compel people to follow rules and manufacture the appearance of social harmony. Yet it cannot engender human warmth.
People want more than material comfort and technological advancement. They want authentic relationships and communities. They want to believe that a stranger will stop when they collapse, that a neighbor will speak up when they disappear, and that joining others to help the vulnerable will foster connections instead of making them a target of the state.
That is why some members of China’s elite continue to leave even when doing so means exchanging fast trains and inexpensive delivery services for the United States’ dysfunction and disorder. They may not invoke freedom or democracy when explaining their decisions, but as the feminist slogan reminds us, the personal is political.
