A growing number of Chinese urban professionals are subscribing to a new school of thought known as runxue, the study of how to 'run' away from their home country, as residents' day-to-day lives are subject to ever more state interference.
“This is definitely not a normal phenomenon, nor is it something that would be widely talked about in a healthy society,” said Li Nuo, 45, from Hebei province, who obtained permanent residency in Japan last year and now runs an e-commerce company in Osaka. Recently, he has been helping friends and family trying to leave China.
is without a doubt backwards. People seem to have learned to cope with living in an unreasonable system, but will our lives ever become better?” “People feel that runxue is a way for them not just to imagine a different life. It’s a way to imagine their autonomy,” said Xiang, of the Max Planck Institute. “It’s a way to express anger, powerlessness and disillusion.”Official attitudes toward emigration, once seen as a betrayal of socialist ideology during the early years of the People’s Republic of China, have loosened over the years.
“It’s not only what people do that shapes society. It’s also where people imagine their future or a good life to be. Runxue says that people imagine the good life to be somewhere else, and that says a lot about Chinese society today,” said Heidi Ostbo Haugen, a professor of China studies at the University of Oslo.“They are always ready to leave, and that does something to how you live your life here and now,” she said.