“Run” (润) has been one of the hottest words in the Chinese language since 2021. A clever wordplay on both the Chinese pronunciation and English meaning of the word, “run” refers to the recent trend of emigrating from an increasingly restrictive and authoritarian China for greener pastures overseas.

This emigration wave, which began shortly after Xi Jinping amended the Constitution in 2018 to abolish term limits, took off during Covid and has only accelerated since. This can be reflected in the surge of illegal Chinese immigrants arriving at the US-Mexican border. In the 2023 fiscal year alone, US Border Patrol has apprehended 24,000 Chinese migrants at the Southern border, up 1,115% (i.e., 11.5 times more) than the previous fiscal year. Chinese migrants crossing the Darien Gap on their way to the US has become a common sight, with both English and Chinese-language media offering extensive coverage of this new phenomenon.

Amongst the first of these Chinese illegal migrants is a man named Dong Zhao, who lived all his life as a member of an underground Christian house church in Henan Province, which is known to have a large network of house churches and home to many Christians. Dong claimed asylum in the US after a long and arduous trek across jungles and cartel territory; he eventually found refuge in Texas and linked up with local churches there.

Dong is far from alone in his story or journey. Ever since Xi Jinping tightened his control on Chinese society and launched crackdowns on civil society and especially organised religion in China, Chinese house church Christians have faced imprisonment, church closures and state coercion to join the officially sanctioned Three-Self Patriotic Movement. That is nothing new. What is very new, however, is that for the first time in recent history, there are high-profile cases of Chinese Christians, even an entire congregation, leaving the country to seek religious freedom.

Mayflower Church/Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church

The most high-profile case in this recent exodus wave has got to be the story of the “Mayflower church”. A Reformed church linked to China’s new wave of urban Calvinist house churches based in China’s tech capital, Shenzhen, aka China’s Silicon Valley, Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church’s pastor Pan Yongguang had close links to the most high-profile house church pastor in China, Wang Yi of the Early Rain Covenant Reformed church, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for subversion of state power.

Pastor Pan was not nearly as famous as the outspoken Mr Wang, but he led a quiet congregation of around 60 people, and they had their small underground Christian school for children of the flock. However, when Pan realised that the school was no longer going to be tolerated by the authorities as the crackdown on house churches intensified, he and the elders of this small church made a daring decision — to make a run for it and leave China.

This is unheard of in modern Chinese Christian history — an entire congregation leaving China due to persecution instead of opting to stay and endure it, like previous generations of Chinese Christians did. And the Mayflower church, as they were later nicknamed, left just in time for the visa-free destination of Jeju Island, South Korea. This is because two months after they arrived in Jeju, the COVID pandemic took over the world.

Three years later, having had their asylum requests in South Korea turned down, the entire congregation moved to Thailand in the hope of eventually being granted refugee status in the United States. They had their high-profile backers — Republican US Congressman Chris Smith was one of them — as well as Bob Fu of ChinaAid, who himself is an exiled Christian pastor of house church origins. Fu, who has a close personal friendship with former US president George W. Bush, has rescued many persecuted dissidents and Chinese Christians to the US, the most well-known of which is the blind activist Chen Guangcheng.