Why Chinese migrants to the US risk deadly journey via the jungles of South America
- Conditions in China are forcing many middle-class Chinese to beat a treacherous path from Ecuador to Mexico and the US for a chance to live the American dream

As the morning fog lifts over a river cutting through dense jungle in Panama, a small wooden boat with loud engines breaks the calm. On board are migrants clad in life jackets.
They have just made it out of the Darien Gap, a stretch of rainforest that separates South and North America. As the vessel docks at a makeshift pier, Cai Fei, a weathered 58-year-old Chinese man covered in bruises, steps off the wooden boat and lets out a long-awaited sigh of relief.
“Finally! We made it out alive,” he exclaims, raising his arms, and the other migrants cheer.
Sitting on a moss-covered rock by the river’s edge, Cai watches as one boat after another docks at the pier and at least a dozen Chinese men and women cautiously but joyfully step onto the land: one man carrying a four-year-old boy, a middle-aged woman limping her way off the boat, another young man dragging his tattered slippers.
Though strangers in their homeland, they now share an odyssey spanning thousands of miles, across jungles and continents. Their collective purpose is clear: they wanted to reach the United States by way of South and Central America – a once-unthinkable journey that has in recent months gained traction and become a popular migration route among people desperate to leave China.
Political oppression, stifled freedom of speech, prolonged unemployment, educational disparities and failing businesses were just a few of the factors driving their escape.