From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro.

This is the Daily.

Today.

A crisis of confidence is brewing inside China, where the heavy hand of the government

is turning true believers in the Chinese dream into skeptics willing to flee the country. My colleague Lee U.N. on how that crisis is now showing up at the US-Mexico border.

It's Thursday, February 15th.

Lee, you write about China for the Times.

Tell us how it is that you first came to this story.

You know, I watch a lot of Chinese social media for my job and in early 2023 I started saying something quite surprising for me. I saw all these videos on

social media of Chinese people crossing the US border with Mexico by taking the route what we call the Darren Gap.

And most people taking the Darren Gap are from Venezuela, Ecuador, and Haiti.

But what felt so unusual for Chinese people taking this journey

is that unlike these other groups,

these Chinese are fleeing the world's second largest economy.

Right.

They are not in most of the public's imagination

in the same boat as the migrants from any of the

countries we think of where people are fleeing violence and poverty and

taking this very dangerous route the daring gap.

Yeah.

And how many Chinese migrants are we talking about here?

You know, last year in 2023, 24,000 Chinese cross the southern border.

...