11.11.2022 by Iris Zhao and Jenny Tang
Vicky Wei says when she “ran” away from China and moved to Australia, she felt immense relief.
“It felt like leaving a prison behind,” Ms Wei said.
After graduating from university in Melbourne in 2019, she went back to visit her family but became stuck in China because of COVID-19 border closures.
“There was no life. Except for work and study, I couldn’t earn recognition anywhere in life.”
Despite China’s harsh pandemic restrictions, Ms Wei said what she disliked most were some men’s misogynistic attitudes towards women.
“[Many men I came across in China] were scared of signs of feminism. They don’t like women to comment or express opinions,” she said.
“Some of them are good in nature, but I lost the appetite to share [my thoughts] with them.”
’Run philosophy’ and women in China
Ms Wei said that running away from China was in her best interests.
The urge to run away from China is referred to as the “run philosophy” — or “runxue” — a term coined during the pandemic.
A woman in a blue top stands in front of a wooden wall.
Dr Wang Pan says there are many issues in China that cause discontent for women. (Supplied: Pan Wang)
The coded phrase emerged because the idea is considered too sensitive to discuss openly in China.
“Run [philosophy] is a subculture growing out of dissatisfaction about the [social] environment,” said Dr Wang Pan, an expert on China’s gender issues at the University of New South Wales.
“Some people were feeling pessimistic about the future given the COVID-zero policy during the pandemic.”
China doesn’t publish data on the number of people leaving the country, or migration figures, but its growing prevalence can be traced in what people are searching for online.
According to WeChat Index, a tool for analysing trending search topics on the Chinese social media platform, the number of searches for the word “migration” has risen over the past year.
On November 8 the keyword “migration” appeared 33 million times on the index, compared to 7 million times in 2021.
This means that more content and searches related to migration are occurring on WeChat, which has 1.2 billion users.
The “run philosophy” idea was gender-neutral at the beginning, but some people have started to connect it with the experiences of women in China.
Recently, an online discussion board on “feminists in run philosophy” looked at why the idea was important to Chinese women.
The discussion included guidance for women on ways to leave China, including seeking work permits overseas or studying abroad.
international students: Graduating
Many women from China study in Australia.(Reuters: Jason Reed)
Last month, a short essay in Chinese was posted on a popular open publishing platform, based in Taiwan, on the topic of women leaving China.
The essay, titled On My Run Philosophy, was by an author who herself left China.
“Any woman like me, as long as they have the wisdom of survival and the patriarchy does not swallow their female instinct, also will choose ’the run’,” wrote the woman, who goes by the pen-name “unouno”.
Some other online forums with themes of studying abroad and migration have also been overwhelmed by discussions around run philosophy, with many posts by women.
A group of Chinese children play on a slide
Women in China are now encouraged to have three children. (Reuters: Aly Song)
Dr Wang said the links between run philosophy and feminism are “complex” but migration data published in countries like Australia does show women are leaving China.
“Certainly there is a growing number of women who are pursuing study or proceeding to work or live overseas, but we don’t have any data on [how many women want to run away]”, Dr Wang said.
“A lot of people are going overseas for different purposes, rather than feeling bad about living in China.”
In Australia, there are more female Chinese-born migrants than men, 55.6 per cent compared with 44.4 per cent, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
’They wouldn’t ask men the same questions’
A woman looks through cutouts in a door locked with a bike lock.
Lockdowns in China continue to impact people’s lives. (Reuters: Aly Song)
Jessica Chuh lives in Shanghai but would also like to leave China.
“There are far more women than men who want to ’run’, as far as I can see, it’s like one in 10 [among] people I know,” she said.
Ms Chuh has gone through several strict lockdowns in Shanghai and said harsh pandemic policies have caused her a lot of distress.
But Ms Chuh added that her discontent with life in China was also related to being a woman in her early 30s and the unfair judgements that were placed on her in the workplace.
“I’m turning 31 this year. When I was looking for a job earlier, recruiters would assume I would get married or be going to have a baby soon, and they asked me whether I had plans,” she said.
“They wouldn’t ask men the same questions.”
While the three-child policy has been promoted in China since 2021, the country has not yet strengthened parental leave schemes and anti-discrimination laws, as experts suggested.
Ms Chuh said this type of gender discrimination was subtle but commonplace in China.
“It is sad people have grown so used to it,” she said.
Three women walk down a street with a chain attached to one in a white dress. They all wear masks
Chinese women protest after news that a mother-of-eight was chained at home.(Supplied: Free Chinese Feminists)
Ms Chuh also said she was becoming more upset at the increasing number of reports of violence against women in China.
A TikTok video showing a mother of eight children chained to a bed at home sparked outrage across China in January.
Then in August, a group of men brutally attacked four women late at night.
CCTV captured the scene, and showed the men in the video turning to violence when sexual harassment was met with resistance.
Men also outnumber women in China — the decades-long One Child Policy saw baby boys prioritised, and years later there are around 34 million more men than women in the country.
The Chinese Communist Party has also ramped up online harassment of women with opinions and expertise on China, as recently highlighted by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Danielle Cave and Albert Zhang.
The shadow pandemic
Crouched woman with young child look through fence.
The phrase “run philosophy” was coined to capture the sentiment of people wanting to leave China.(Reuters: Aly Song)
As lockdowns in China continue with the country striving to keep the number of COVID cases to zero, experts are also concerned these strict policies are making the lives of vulnerable women in domestic violence situations more difficult.
The UN has described the violence against women around the world during the pandemic as the shadow pandemic.
Dr Sara Davies, an international relations professor at Griffith University, is researching domestic violence during lockdowns in China but said it was hard to get data.
“It was really important [to have research about this] because all kinds of intimate violence we know across the world was occurring with lockdowns,” she said.
“What’s striking in the case of mainland China is that you have such massive numbers of populations under lockdowns.”
Dr Davies said some of her research during the pandemic showed women in China were posting less online during restrictions, which could be because women are required to conform to social norms like being peacemakers and caregivers.
Ms Chuh said she felt lucky that she wasn’t experiencing violence, but felt helpless about the problem.
“I don’t know what I can do to prevent things like that from happening to myself, or to other women in general,” she said.
"I just can’t let myself get too deep into this. The anger and depression is overwhelming.
“I told myself what I need first is to get myself out of [here].”
