When Every Country is in a State of Emergency

Ah Long spent years building a life in Shanghai. Then the pandemic arrived. China’s Zero-COVID policy cost him his job, his relationship, and eventually his faith that he could build a future in the country amid such an emergency. So he did something almost unimaginable: He set out alone for the United States, crossing the Darién Gap, surviving robberies, and surrendering at the US-Mexico border to seek asylum.

But by the time he arrived, America had also changed.

In this episode, reporter Aria Young follows Ah Long’s extraordinary journey from China to New York and examines how both Beijing and Washington have turned to the language of emergency to expand executive power. The story asks a larger question: When governments rule through crisis, what happens to the people caught between?

Guests:

Ah Long, Chinese asylum seeker living in New York

Rory Truex, Associate Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University

Rev. Mike Chan, Executive Director of Ministries in New York at Chinese Christian Herald Crusade

Additional Resources: 

Crossing the Darién Gap: Migrants Risk Death on the Journey to the US, Diana Roy and Sabine Baumgartner, Council on Foreign Relations 

Deportation Data Project

A Study of Chinese Law on Restricting Personal Liberty for Public Health Protection: Taking the COVID-19 Epidemic as the Entry Point, Tengfei Liu and Zhongwu Ma, Frontiers in Public Health